Tales of the Fallen Republic
by Yeti Cola
Summary: Amid the cloud-high skyscrapers of Coruscant, an Emperor rules with an iron fist. Master of a thousand worlds, he controls the deadliest army in history and has spies lurking in every corner of the galaxy. Coruscant is a dark and mysterious place inhabited by soldiers, spies, politicians, assassins, and prisoners. They all have a story to tell, but will they live to tell it?
1. The Tale of Luka Kroe and Vorena Enniss

_"Blessed are those who have lived to see the Empire, but more blessed are the unborn generation that will only know the Empire. We must ensure the schools teach them the follies and corruption of democracy and the glory of the Empire and its Emperor."_

-Pollux Hax, "From the Holoboard to Home: On the Intersections of Children's Mental Health, Education, and Social Policy"

The Tale of Luka Kroe and Vorena Enniss, or the Rebel's Tale

Vorena Enniss was new to Trebor High School. On the first day of school, her father dropped her off in a shiny new air speeder. He wished her a good first day as she got off, and she gave a shy, sweet smile and said she would try. She was almost inside the building when she hesitated, looked back and waved a small wave. Her father waved back. He watched her until she was inside and then he flew off.

That year everyone noticed Vorena walk through the school doors for the first time, for she was like the rare bird that sang against morning swathes of pinks and yellows and baby blues oblivious to itself. She was the girl teachers liked to call on for her soft, correct answers, and she was the one other girls rambled to and boys glanced at and shot away when she glanced back. She was the quiet breeze in the ruckus of the city, and she was the pale starlight in the dark and clouded night. When she came into the school with her books held tightly to her chest, she reminded everyone of trees and windy glades and dew-covered flowers they had never seen, for no such things grew on Coruscant.

Then there was Luka Kroe, a lanky boy who spent his time in class doodling in his textbook and tapping his foot furiously on the floor. On cool nights he slept with the windows open and listened to the air speeders whistle their electric wind, or he would stay up and watch the starships rise from Coruscant's ports and rocket silently into space. After school he walked in the city streets alone, with crumpled and balled up papers and weightless litter blown after him like wilted brown leaves. He went to his grandmother's house and played with her pet chiwa, or he sat on her porch and played himself a game of dejarik. Or you might hear him churn out a solitary tune from his mother's black ball organ by the small window. But most of the time he was in his room playing a sinthar that his father had bought him for his birthday. The sinthar was a fretted instrument with seven strings, and with it Luka played melodies his father had grown up listening to. And Luka was never seen with any other child.

That morning, the morning Luka first saw Vorena, she was wearing a neat blue blouse and a wrinkless black skirt and a little golden locket around her neck. She entered through the side door of the classroom and moved quietly to the seat in front of Luka. He looked at her and forgot to smile or nod, just looked, and she gave an uneasy look and sat down. Luka realized his textbook was open to a doodle he had just started of a xenu. He quickly erased it with aggressive rubs from his eraser.

The teacher, a rotund man with white hair where hair still grew, ambled into the classroom and wrote his name on the holoboard in big crude lettering.

"My name is Mister Daylu," he said loudly. "And I'm your homeroom teacher this year."

Mr. Daylu began lecturing about class expectations and test schedules and homework requirements, and the whole time Luka sat back-straight in his chair and listened attentively. He didn't draw once in his textbook for the rest of the class period, or for any other class period.

That day, when school was over, he watched Vorena switch out her books from her crisp blue locker and head for large double doors leading outside to the school yard. It was as if the nasty pallid lighting didn't touch her, as if the metal walls had been plied back to let in fresh air. She carried some books as she went and held them to her chest. Luka caught up with her and started walking beside her.

"Excuse me. I think I have you in one of my classes," he said.

She was caught a little off guard and seemed to contemplate. "I suppose we do," she said.

"May I carry your books?"

She shrugged. "I guess so. If you want to," she said.

He reached out and took her books from her.

"So are you new here?" Luka asked.

"This is my first day," she said.

"Where did you go before?"

"A small private school on Corulag. We moved here because of my dad's work."

"What does he do?"

"He works for a space transport company."

"Oh."

They walked out the double doors, and down the walkway was Vorena's father in his shiny air speeder.

"Thank you for carrying my books. I'll take them from here," she said.

"It's no problem," he said. He handed her back her books. "Can I carry your books tomorrow?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because I'd like to."

She was quiet for a moment. "I guess it'd be alright," she said at last. She glanced at her father waiting in the air speeder. "Well I better go. See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow," he said.

Vorena walked away slowly to the air speeder and was gone.

'

The next morning, he happened to class early and sat at the same desk as yesterday while Mr. Daylu prepped the holoboard for his lesson. Vorena came in just before class started, and Luka waved at her a little, and she gave a tiny wave back and sat in front of him again.

After school he saw her at her locker. He walked up to her.

"Well, here I am," he said, grinning.

She smiled a little. "And I'm not surprised."

"May I carry your books?"

"Are you sure you want to? I can carry them fine."

"I know, but I'd still like to, and I never do anything I don't like."

She nodded and held out her books for him to grab. He carefully took them, and they strolled alongside each other.

"You keep carrying my books, and I don't even know your name," she said.

"Luka," he said.

They walked all the way down in silence. Vorena decided to let Luka say something first, but he never did. She glanced slightly over at him and saw how at ease and how happy he seemed. They passed the school doors, and he stopped and handed her back the books.

"I guess this it," he said.

"Guess so," she said.

"See you tomorrow."

"Luka-" she began to say.

"Yes?"

"Never mind. See you tomorrow." She walked away.

And they saw each other every morning in homeroom and every day after class and would talk in the minutes before class started, and for the next two weeks he carried her books. One morning Mr. Daylu had to temporarily leave the classroom to call so-and-so at home about this-and-such, and he said he'd be right back, and so for about five minutes Luka and Vorena talked about nothing in particular, and they found their conversation engaging all the same. And each day the last bell of the day would blast its metallic rattling fanfare, and there was a brief moment of silence in the halls, and the doors burst open and out poured all the students in the halls, talking over each other and their feet hitting the floor in a loud droning rumble. And sure enough, there'd be Vorena Enniss at her locker, and then there'd be Luka offering to carry her books again. On their short walks they talked about all sorts of things.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked him.

"A singer," he said.

"I hear it's hard to make it as a singer."

"I know, but I'm going to try. I practice the sinthar a lot."

"You play?"

He nodded. "I can show you sometime if you'd like."

"That sounds fun."

Luka thought for a while. "Could you do me a favor, Vorena?"

"Tell me the favor first."

"In a couple of weeks they're having a light festival. There'll be giant hot air balloons that light up and change colors, and there will be lots of food and music. Maybe you'd like to come, too?"

Vorena pursed her lips, unsure of what to say.

"Don't you think it'd be fun?" he said.

"I don't think I can go. I'm going to be busy," she said.

He almost asked busy doing what but stopped himself.

"Some of the balloons let you ride them. And you can see the old Jedi Temple from them. And you can see the big dome where the Emperor lives. I'll pay for us so you won't have to pay for anything. It's a lot of fun and I hope you come. Have you ever tried a Coruscanti bantha burger? You can get some really good ones there."

"Thanks, Luka, but no, maybe some other time."

He looked at her and said, "I shouldn't have asked, should I?"

"It's not a big deal," she said.

The next morning Luka came to class early, but Vorena never showed, and after school, she wasn't at her locker, and he was afraid to approach her friends and inquire. That night he couldn't sleep and stayed up and watched the spaceships outside his window jump to hyperspace and noiselessly blip away from the planet in tiny white comet streaks, and his mind stirred restlessly, so he picked up his sinthar and strummed a pensive tune that sounded like water gently lapping a boat on a quiet autumn night. He fell asleep to the faint sound of air speeders. He overslept his alarm clock the following morning, and his mother woke him up, and he scrambled to put his clean clothes on and to brush his teeth. He grabbed his backpack and rushed out the door after saying goodbye to his mother. He walked fast to the school and into Mr. Daylu's classroom in the middle of the lecture. Mr. Daylu ignored him and kept talking and scribbling on the holoboard. Vorena was there in class but was sitting at a different desk on the other side of the classroom near the front. He looked at her, and she was looking down at her book, not reading, just looking at it.

That morning he saw her at her locker talking to some girls and laughing, and he didn't talk to her and instead left the school as he had every day in the years before he had seen Vorena for the first time. She watched him walk out the doors, and she chuckled at something a girl said as she looked, and she was only half-listening to the girl.

She continued to sit at her new desk, and a few days later she decided to bring her favorite album, John Dreamer's _Galaxies in a Hand_ , to class with her. That day she approached Luka at his locker and said, "I'm sorry if I've been ignoring you." He said it was alright, and she handed him the album. "It's my favorite," she said. He took it home and stayed up that night listening to it, and he returned it to her the next day and the talked about the album. She brought up other singers and bands she liked, and he brought up the ones he liked. They walked together onto the schoolyard, and Luka thanked her for lending the album. "You're welcome," she said. They said goodbye and parted ways, she to her father's air speeder, and he to the streets of Coruscant and to his home.

It was about this time that she found it hard not to sneak a glance out the corner of her eye at Luka during class, more a flicker than glance, and every time she looked, his head was down and he was scribbling in his book and seeming to not pay any attention to Mr. Daylu. But whenever Mr. Daylu called on him to answer a question, he casually perked up and answered fine, and she found herself glancing at him for several seconds as he answered. And after class she would talk with some friends she had made and was unable to look in his direction at all as he passed.

And then on the night of the light festival, Luka didn't go, and he wondered if she did, and decided she hadn't. He felt a faint hope and imagined her going and standing under shining hot air balloons looking for him, but he knew it was a vain and selfish image, and more than that, he knew it was wrong and stupid to imagine such things. And the music from John Dreamer's album lingered with him, so he tuned it out by playing his sinthar and singing.

Later that month, a new girl appeared at Trebor High School. She had transferred from another school on Coruscant, and her name was Sara Farrell, and everyone noticed her walk through the school doors for the first time, for she was like the rare bird that sang against twilight swathes of greens and murky blues and fiery reds oblivious to itself. She was the girl teachers liked to call on for her confident, correct answers, and she was the one girls confided in and boys talked to with ease but never had any chance of catching her eye. She came in wearing modest and simple clothes, and when Luka saw her, she reminded him of the stirring of leaves in a quiet forest, or the swooshing of a deep and endless sea, though he had never heard such things. He shared no class with her, nor did he once speak to her, for thoughts of Vorena still weighed heavily on his mind.

He and Vorena spoke very little now, and only intermittently. She never returned to her old desk in front of him, and he never instigated any conversation with her. Whenever she spoke to him though, he was always friendly and talkative. The days they talked were the hardest. On those days he would roam the streets of Coruscant with his hands in his pockets, deep in thought and with the wind at his back.

Then on a weekend morning, when the sun was bright and warmthless and while a cold front swept through the neighborhood, Luka sat on the glass steps of his grandmother's porch playing his sinthar and mumbling a quiet song when a girl in warm running clothes jogged by. She stopped and listened, and the girl was Sara Farrell, the new girl at Trebor High School.

"Nice playing," she called, smiling.

Luka stopped abruptly and glanced up and saw her standing across the yard. "Thanks," he said and smiled back absentmindedly, distracted with other thoughts.

"I think I've seen you at my school," she said. "You look familiar."

He laughed and said, "Maybe. It's a big school." He paused. "Do you live around here?"

She nodded and pointed towards some houses. "My house is back behind there," she said. "Is this where you live?"

"No, this is my grandma's place. I visit sometimes," he said.

"Oh, okay."

And that was all of the first meeting of Luka Kroe and Sara Farrell. She waved and said, "Well it was nice meeting you. Maybe I'll see you at school," and he answered, "Nice meeting you," and she kept on her jog and was gone.

And they did see each other at school, though not often, and they would say hello to each other at passing and move on, and they didn't yet know each other's names.

After school, he saw her sitting on the school steps alone waiting for someone to pick her up, and he considered going up and talking to her, and he couldn't think of a single reason not to, so he did just that. And they sat together and talked about all sorts of things.

"And what are you going to do when you grow up?" he asked her.

"I want to be a doctor," she said.

"I'm terrible at science."

"I'm terrible at everything else," she said, laughing.

He laughed too. He hadn't laughed in a long time, and though it was genuine it felt unnatural to him and maybe manufactured, as if he was lying his happiness.

They talked for several minutes before her mother arrived to pick her up.

"My name's Sara, by the way," she said, extending a hand to him. He raised his hand and shook with her. "Luka," he said.

"See you around," she said.

"See ya."

She walked up to the air speeder and got in, and they watched each other as she flew away. He waved, and she waved back. "Who's that?" her mother teased. "Just a friend," she said, a little embarrassed. "His name is Luka."

They didn't see each other often, and it was only intermittently, but when they talked they got along well. Meanwhile Luka and Vorena stopped talking completely, and Luka hated going to Mr. Daylu's class. He wondered if seeing her in the class would ever become more bearable, and he deeply feared it wouldn't.

He began looking forward to seeing Sara though. Once every weekend morning he would be playing his sinthar on his grandmother's porch, and sure enough there'd be Sara Farrell jogging by, and she'd stop and they'd talk for a while. One time he invited her to play a quick game of dejarik on the porch, and she accepted the invitation and destroyed him twice. "I better get going," she said, realizing the time, and she hurried off.

Things stayed like this for nearly the rest of the semester. At some point Vorena Enniss began dating a tall boy, very attractive and sweetly mannered. The boy was sixteen, a good two years older than her. After school they would talk and hold hands, smiling but never so far as laughing.

And when the semester was almost over, the week of the school dance rolled around, and Luka decided he wouldn't go. Vorena was certainly going with her boyfriend, and when Sara mentioned the dance to Luka, she asked him if he was going. "No, no I don't think so," he said dryly. "Oh," was all she said, and they spoke nothing more of it. She heard rumors from other girls that several boys planned on asking her to the dance, all of them handsome and well-liked. And later that week, one of the rumored boys, an athletic boy named Tobe Spurket, asked her to the dance, and she agreed. "Great," the boy said, jubilant.

On the night of the dance, there was Luka, pacing back and forth on his grandmother's porch, hands sometimes in his pockets, arms sometimes crossed, and he kept his gaze on the floor, occasionally looking up at the street as if he was waiting for someone to show. His grandmother noticed and joined him on the porch.

"You look so stern," she said.

"It's nothing. I just wanted some fresh air is all," he said without looking at her.

"You won't mind me joining you then," she said, and she eased onto a chair.

"Of course not."

They both enjoyed each other's company in silence, he standing and observing the land speeders dart down the durasteel street, and she seated and contentedly reading a holobook. The sun had almost set, and the sky no longer shouted with golds and pinks and tangerines and now was a dark and shadowy blue, and the horizon glared red and showed just over the metal roofs across the street. He found himself thinking about the sounds of the ocean and imagined he could hear it sway.

His grandmother suddenly looked up at him for a long time, and then she set down her holobook.

"Luka," she said.

He turned, startled. Neither of them had spoken in the peaceful hour.

"Will you come and sit with me?" she asked.

He joined her and sat in the old plasticast chair beside her. She looked at him intently until he looked away. "Luka, something's bothering you."

"I'm fine."

"But you're clearly not."

"It's fine."

"Why don't you go visit that girl you're always talking to?"

Luka was caught a little off guard at the mention of Sara. "I can't. She's at the school dance right now," he said. "It's probably already starting," he added sheepishly.

"You should go see her then."

"She's already going with someone else." He almost added that another girl would be there, and he desperately wanted to say it, but he kept quiet from shame.

"So? I've seen how she lights up when she sees you. You should go see her."

"But the dance has already started."

His grandmother shook her head. "Why is youth is wasted on the wrong people?" she said, getting up. "If you change your mind, I still have your grandfather's old suit hanging. He wore it when we started dating, and it should fit you fine, and I can take you to the dance in my land speeder."

He gave a weak smile. "Thanks," he said. She nodded and disappeared inside. And he stayed and felt the chilled wind blow, and he watched the horizon's red band die out and fade to a smoky brown.

'

He did end up going to the dance after all that night. His grandfather's suit fit him like a glove, and he fixed up his hair, and his grandmother took him to the school dance in her old jalopy of a land speeder. The dance was being held on a luxurious sail barge docked and hovering beside the school. The barge was brightly lit: rows of little lights shone over the deck like stars against the night sky, slowly changing their colors. And there was plenty of food, and on a table was a glass bowl with a metal ladle and filled with frosty white punch, and everyone danced with their dates to the upbeat music of a live band.

And there near the prow of the barge was Sarah Farrell drinking punch and chatting with some girls, and her date Tobe Spurket stood beside her listening to the lively conversation. She was wearing a modest white dress that dazzled like starlight, and when Luka walked on the sail barge he was nervous and a little worried, but he noticed Sara immediately and suddenly the jumbled and screaming noises in his mind ceased, and he knew he had to go up to her. As he made his way up to the front of the sail barge, Sara saw him and for a moment she watched him with her lips just slightly parted, and her eyes did not once train off him. The other girls watched too, for Luka looked very handsome, and Tobe looked back and forth between Luka and the girls trying to make sense of what was happening.

"Sara," Luka said.

The girls watched intently, and so did Tobe.

"Sara, I know I said I wouldn't come," he said and trailed off. He gave up trying to find the words and extended a hand to her. He smiled at her, and he didn't look arrogant nor did he look sheepish. He looked assured, and gentle. She smiled and glanced at Tobe as if to ask for approval, and she reached out and took Luka's hand, and he led her onto the dance floor.

"That's my date!" Tobe called.

Luka swayed a hand dismissively. "She's out of your parsec anyway," he said.

And Luka Kroe and Sara Farrell danced together for the first time that night, and he admitted he didn't actually know how to dance, and she laughed and admitted she didn't either, and they hallooed with laughter, and they had never had a more fun night.

Meanwhile a beautiful Vorena Enniss stood by the punch with her boyfriend, and she saw Luka dancing with a very pretty girl in a white dress, and he looked enrapt with her, and Vorena smiled and was happy for him.

"Let's dance," her boyfriend told her, and he led her onto the dance floor and they danced to the live music and had a good time, and occasionally she couldn't stop herself from glancing over at Luka, and she would look for several seconds at a time. Luka and Vorena never forgot each other, nor did they ever speak a word to each other again. Vorena would remember him as that boy who had carried her books for her, and he would remember her as something more, then something less as he became older. But while he and Sara Farrell danced, he thought nothing of Vorena, and he talked with Sara under the many colored lights of the sail barge, and under the many starships blipping brightly into space like shooting stars.


	2. The Tale of CC-1010

_"The so-called_ Emperor's Eye _does not exist. I unfortunately must reject your proposal to write a thesis on an urban myth. Please schedule a time to meet with me with in my office, and we can discuss other possible thesis topics. Thanks."_

-Pollux Hax, in a letter to a student

The Tale of CC-1010, or the Clone's Tale

Air traffic darted through Coruscant's cityscape in neat and filed skylanes. Night was over the city, and the buildings screamed sleeplessly with lights, and the flying vehicles kept moving in endless streams like hot and pumping metal blood. The city roared with an electric noise, and the locals did not sleep. It seemed no one ever slept in Coruscant.

CC-1010, famously known as Warden Fox, sat in an imperial dropship speeding high and between the skyscrapers. The dropship's interior was cast in a dull red light the color of a dying twilight. With Fox stood his best men, nine total, collectively known as the Emperor's Eye. They were the Emperor's paramilitary police force on Coruscant, each clone selected from the best of the Coruscant Guard, and keeping the peace was their sole mandate. The Coruscant Guard patrolled Coruscant's streets and guarded the Imperial Senate, but it was the Emperor's Eye that knew military tactics and used military-grade weapons, and it was them that changed the planet. Under their surveillance, Coruscant's criminal underbelly writhed and died quickly like a decapitated snake. Warden Fox and his Emperor's Eye gutted the city's darkest alleys and boroughs of their illicit filth and scrubbed them clean, leaving behind safety and order. "The Eye is keen" became a saying among the owners of small bars and rundown diner joints, and they enjoyed their order and safety, and theirs was Imperial Peace.

The dropship slowed to a stop. The men heard the pilot's voice buzz in their helmet comlinks.

"Load up," the pilot said.

The dropship's red light flashed bright green. The doors slid open, and suddenly the men heard the deafening hum of Coruscant mixed with a loud rushing wind. The pilot landed the dropship high on the roof of a skyscraper, and the wind was strong and cold.

Fox and the Emperor's Eye hopped off the dropship and watched it lift off and whir away. Fox raised his two pistols, TX-13s, the new Imperial model. His men carried military-grade EM-11s. Their armor was white and red, and Fox's was red only.

"Stay dark, men," Fox said.

They slinked across the roof without a sound. The roof was flat, square, and completely bare of a single structure. It was nothing but a metal sheet. Off the building's sides a hot light pollution rose up like a fire, but the light felt distant. It was as if the clones stood on a tall, lonely mountain, and the air suddenly felt colder.

"Driller," said Fox.

A clone pulled a drilling tool and worked down into the metal. Sparks shot up, but the drilling made only a quiet scraping sound. The drill burrowed a hole just wide enough for a man to slip through it. Fox gestured two fingers towards the hole. He reached for his grappling rope and fixed one end onto the roof and then lowered himself into the hole with it. The Emperor's Eye followed.

They soon stood in an empty hallway, immaculately clean, and utterly noiseless. The walls were bare and spotless white, and the floor was of black marble, and the clones could see their reflection in it. The hall stretched far ahead of them and behind them, and it bent and joined into many other halls. Along the walls were many chrome doors, each engraved with a number. The hallway carried the strong metallic scent of an old coin.

Fox gestured towards one end of the hall and began to move in that direction, and the men stalked in a single file behind him. Their footsteps made an almost inaudible clatter. The stark white armor of the clones looked nearly as sterile as the hallway, if it weren't for the red markings. They were like undead skeletons with the suggestion of warm flesh and blood, but their eyes were black and warmthless, like the chill wind of the nights on Coruscant.

Only Fox's armor was completely red, and the Jedi called him the Red Death, and Jedi Hunter, and Traitor.

At the far end of the hallway were chrome double doors, and behind the doors was a tight staircase that spiraled down in sharp turns like a bottomless square pit. The clones moved dozens of floors down. They stopped descending at Floor 826, and Fox opened another set of double doors. Behind the doors was another maze of hallways with pristinely white walls and polished black floors and chrome doors. The floor was identical to the one above, empty and pindrop quiet. Fox moved swiftly over the black marble floor with his pistols in hand, and his men followed him with rifles in theirs. At a particular door they all stopped, and on the door was engraved TH-138. Fox crouched and leaned against the door as if to listen in behind it. He gave a nod, and two men set small explosive charges around the door frame. Fox signaled with three fingers, then two, then one. A clone pressed a button on a tiny remote, and the charges exploded and blew open the door. Fox rushed in, and the Emperor's Eye poured in after him with their rifles poised to shoot.

It was a small room, with medical holoscreens and computer terminals on the walls, all black and long unused. In the center was a medical bed hovering silently. The bed was a flat, elongated platform shaped like a saucer, made completely of white plastoid, and it casted a dark shadow beneath it. On top of the bed was a teal insulfoam mattress. In the corner, a deactivated medical droid stood motionless. Like the rest of the skyscraper, the room looked abandoned. The building had once been a bustling hospital, and one of the best in Coruscant. The Crystal Star Hospital it was called, and even the poor farmers and market stall owners on remote planets knew its name. During the Clone Wars, the Separatists had unleashed a biological weapon on the hospital in what became the greatest terrorist attack in Coruscant's entire history. The Republic quarantined everyone in the building. The Republic scientists scrambled together but found a cure too late, and everyone in the hospital died. Patients, doctors, visitors, janitors. Only the droids survived. The Republic sent hazmat clones wearing decontamination suits to clear the building of the dead, and the building was left abandoned since, all nine hundred floors of it. All that was left was the silence, as if the hazmat clones had come in and sanitized the air of the cries of the dying. Now was just the still quiet, and the numb awakeness, and the dead medical droid in the corner.

The room seemed clear. There was a chance the report had been wrong, that no Jedi was hiding in the hospital room.

"Check for false walls," Fox said. He was called Jedi Hunter for a reason. The spies were rarely wrong. If a Jedi was here, Fox would find him.

The clones began feeling and tapping on the walls, listening for a hollow sound. Meanwhile Fox pried the teal mattress off the medical bed and found a young boy crammed inside the white plastoid frame. The boy was wearing the earthy colored garbs of the Jedi. He looked terrified, but he acted immediately. He reached into the Force, channeled its mystic energy through his arm and into his hand, and propelled Fox off his feet and into the wall with the strength of a hurricane wind. He then reached for his light saber and ignited it. There was a snap and a hiss, and a blue blade of light burst from the metal hilt. The clones surrounded him, aiming their rifles. Fox was winded. He grabbed his TX-13 pistols and pointed them at the boy. He forced himself onto his feet and managed to speak with a labored breath. "Don't do anything stupid, Jedi."

Fox recognized the face from the Imperial holorecords. J-127. The boy was a human named Jak Morako. He was a Padawan, but he didn't have the Padawan's braid. All the Padawans had removed their braids after the burning of the Temple to better hide from the Empire. It hadn't helped J-127. Ten expert killers were ready to blast the boy to the event horizon if he so much as took a step.

"Jay One Two Seven," Fox said, "In the name of the Emperor, you are under arrest. Drop the light saber and put your arms where I can see them."

The Jedi stood tensely, staring into the black lenses masking Fox's eyes. The only sound in the room was the soft electric hum of his blue blade, and the side of his face caught the blue light. His shoulders lowered. He dropped his gaze from Fox and down at the floor. The light saber hissed, and the blue blade was gone. The boy dropped the hilt, and it clanged on the tiled ground. He raised his arms.

The clones tackled the boy and cuffed him. Fox bent over and picked up the light saber hilt. He looked at the Jedi and began the procedural Illum Warning. "You have the right to remain silent," he began. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in the Imperial court. You also have the right to an attorney. The attorney will be appointed to you by the Senate."

The clones escorted J-127 out of the hospital room. Fox spoke into his comlink and notified the Imperial Police. The hospital's elevators had been deactivated for years, so the Imperial Police arranged a dropship to pick them up.

"Punch a hole in that wall," Fox ordered.

Clones set up explosive charges on one of the walls. They activated the bombs and blew a hole through it. Coruscant's wind blasted inside the hall and howled, and the clones could see the skyscrapers and the air speeders and the dark and starless skies.

An imperial dropship gave a low droning as it flew in front of the gaping hole. A platform lifted from the dropship and lowered with a mechanical groan onto the hospital floor. The clones moved with the Jedi onto the platform and into the dropship. The platform raised, and the doors shut.

The night over Coruscant was still young. As the dropship soared high over the air traffic, Warden Fox felt the calming hum of the engines and listened to the dropship whir. And the wind whistled, and below the city roared.


	3. The Tale of Ziro the Hutt

_"Ziro the Hutt is the most powerful being in the galaxy who has no direct connection to the Empire. According to rumor, he has enough money to rebuild the Jedi Temple ten times over, and enough security to fight a small war, and enough gumption to defy Lord Vader himself, if it came to it."_

-Pollux Hax, "The Slug Kings: An Analysis of the Hutt Clan and Their Family Tree"

The Tale of Ziro the Hutt, or the Kingpin's Tale

Ziro the Hutt sat on his dais in his restaurant, the Rosemary Rancor. It was by far the nicest restaurant in the Undercity and perhaps the most famous on Coruscant. Even wealthy and successful elite from Coruscant's surface ventured into the subterranean metropolis just to dine at Ziro's place. Lawyers, judges, and even Imperial senators frequented the Rosemary Rancor, and all respected Ziro, and many openly regarded him a friend.

People said Order 66 changed Ziro, that the birthing of the Empire made him a powerful figure. It was true, this new Imperial Era had afforded Ziro many new opportunities to expand his operations and accumulate wealth and power, but this is not what changed him. He was once a coward, and now he was fat and rich and fearless. Ziro the Hutt was a name more well known than that of his rival Jabba. And here the infamous Prince of Coruscant sat, watching the juze band play on the stage while the rich and powerful dined around him and secretly envied him. Fine and savory aromas played in the air, and beside Ziro sat his most prized singer, a Zeltron named Fayore. Ziro held her in his arms, and he relished the music of his band and the envy of his guests and the love of his Fayore.

Suddenly one from Ziro's private security appeared before him, and the man spoke quietly in Ziro's ear.

"Sy is here. We have her," the man said.

Ziro chuckled deep and slow. "Bring her here," he said in Huttese. He no longer spoke in Basic but only spoke in Huttese now, for Basic was beneath him. He then turned to Fayore and said: "Go and get yourself a drink from the bar. I have some business I need to handle."

"Okay, babe," she said. She gracefully got off the dais and strode towards the bar, and many men eyed her as she passed.

Soon several of Ziro's security came in holding a female Pa'lowick. Sy Snootles was her name, and it very much pleased Ziro to see her.

"Hello, Sy," said Ziro.

"Baby, you have to believe me - I was made to do it. They made me. Baby, listen to me. Please-"

"Quiet, girl. You have done me a great evil, and such an evil does not come without justice."

Sy looked wide-eyed in terror at the security detail around her, desperately searching for a pitying face among them. "What's he saying?" she asked them. "What's he saying? I don't understand Huttese, and please someone tell me."

A man answered coolly: "He says he doesn't forgive you."

Sy looked physically sick, and she shook her head madly. "Please, baby. Don't hurt me. I'm sorry, honest. Take me back. I can sing for you again. I'm a good singer - you know that. I'll sing for free for you, every night on stage I'll sing for you."

Ziro laughed. "I trusted you, loved you, and you betrayed me. Unfortunately for you, my hide is too thick for blaster bolts. Next time you leave someone for dead, make sure they're actually dead."

What did he say?" said Sy.

Again the same man answered. "He said you're a bad killer."

Ziro continued, saying: "Take her to the kitchen and pin her face onto the grill until she stops screaming. Then throw her body out with the trash."

"You got it, boss," said another man in the security detail.

"What did he say? Where are you taking me? Please, baby. I'm sorry. I love you. Don't hurt me! Please!"

The men dragged her away into the kitchen. Ziro's prized singer Fayore came back a little later holding two glasses of wine. She handed one to Ziro, then resumed sitting beside him on the dais.

"Who was that?" she asked.

"You know not to ask me about my business, sweetheart, but I'll tell you. She was a singer. It took months and a star cruiser's worth of credits, but I finally found her and was able to bring her here."

"She must be very good."

"That's the funny thing. It turned out she wasn't all that good after all."

"Sorry to hear that. Must've been disappointing after spending all that money just to bring her over here."

"It's no problem. I still got some entertainment from her."

"Well that's all that matters. Personally, I'm just happy she isn't my replacement."

"No. No one's as good as you, sweetheart."

Ziro and Fayore drank their wine and watched the juze band play on. And the music throbbed, and the people envied, and Fayore smiled in Ziro's arms.


	4. The Tale of CT-1836

_"The crimson masks of the Immortals are a symbol of strength and perpetuity and Imperial regality. The Immortals are anonymous and silent, so it is easy to forget that they were once the best of the clone army; that their eyes, concealed behind a narrow slit of black glass, witnessed the ugliest of the Clone Wars."_

-Pollux Hax, "On the Thematic Use of Masks in the Imperial Military"

The Tale of CT-1836, or the Royal Guard's Tale

The Republic bred millions of clones to fight on its behalf during the Clone Wars. The war was the first major military conflict the galaxy has seen in over a millennia, and with it now over, those clones are having to adjust to peace time while only knowing war. After fighting on battlefronts across the galaxy, many now find themselves stationed on distant outposts, idling away as standing Imperial presence only.

Others have proven more lucky. Just a year ago, CT-1836 (known as Lieutenant "Shiloh") was leading the 300th Ranger Regiment against hordes of droids above Coruscant's atmosphere, where he famously destroyed two Separatist dreadnots. CT-1836 will be one of a select few Clone Wars veterans to join the Immortals, a mysterious and elite team of clones tasked with personally guarding the Emperor himself. The Immortals are more commonly referred to as the Emperor's royal guard.

CT-1836 was interviewed at the Galactic Library on Coruscant, starting at 18:00 on 2 Phobe 1 YE. The interview lasted 30.59 minutes. At the time of the interview, CT-1836 was twelve years old and proved very willing to recount his experiences, even removing his helmet prior to the start of the conversation. The interviewer had no prior affiliation or relationship with CT-1836. The interview was the fifth installment in the "Our Men in White" series and was conducted by the Remembering History Project. The following is a transcript.

 **What is your name?**

CT-1836.

 **That's your numeric designation, but did you have a nickname, or was there something else people called you?**

Yeah. Shiloh.

 **What was the highest rank you achieved in the clone army?**

Lieutenant.

 **How old are you?**

Twelve. So technically twenty four, if you adjust for the accelerated aging.

 **What was early life on Kamino like?**

Wet. It's always raining there. And everything's so sterile and white in the Kaminoan facilities that you feel like you're living in a giant cell-culture dish in a lab somewhere. I guess that's what it technically was.

 **So it wasn't a good experience?**

Yes and no. You couldn't go anywhere and the Kaminoans were always watching you, but I had my brothers. They're what made it for me. We were all stuck in that piss hole together, so it wasn't so bad.

 **And then you were sent to Geonosis?**

[Chuckles.] Hell no. I wanted to get out of there so bad, but I was too young. I was only eight, and you get deployed at ten. I hated seeing my brothers leave without me.

 **So when were you first deployed?**

The second year of the war. I wanted to get out of there so much that I passed all of my combat examinations a year early, so they deployed me at nine instead of ten.

 **Did that happen often?**

It wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of either.

 **So where were you deployed?**

A little moon in the Outer Rim called Jankok. I was enlisted into the 300th Ranger Regiment under Jedi Master Oppo Rancisis and his Padawan Maris Brood.

 **Wasn't Rancisis on the Jedi Council?**

Yeah, he was. Sometimes we would catch him in a Jedi Council meeting. We saw the holograms of big time Jedi like Yoda and Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that was something.

 **What was he like? Rancisis.**

He was a tactical genius, good with a lightsaber too. We used to call him the Magician because he was good at magic, with cards especially. He had four hands, so he could do all sorts of cool tricks. Kept the boys entertained.

 **Yeah? So everyone liked him?**

We respected him. He was one hell of a leader. But he was always in his tent bent over looking at his maps and war charts and reading old war accounts, even during the fighting. The boys didn't like him for that. We heard about other Jedi fighting beside their men, even in front of them, and here ours was in his tent moving us like checkers.

 **A tent? Sounds like a king off some stone age moon.**

You know, actually I think he was supposed to be a sultan or sheikh or something back on his homeworld, but he left it all for the Jedi Order.

There was this one time, we were on Felucia - there are thick fungal forests there - and we had a lot of injured men, and the roads through the forests aren't very wide, so he made the ambulances wait for the A6s (HAVw A6 Juggernauts) to pass. He said we needed tanks on the front lines ASAP, so the ambulances had to wait.

 **I'm guessing you all weren't too happy about that.**

No, no we weren't. A lot of my brothers died who could've been saved.

 **What about his apprentice? What was he like?**

It was a she, and she was everything the Magician wasn't. Her name was Maris Brood, and she was spirited, hot-headed, and rash. She liked to take action and she fought beside us. All the boys loved her. She's the one who gave me my nickname, after I became a lieutenant.

 **How'd you stand out in an army of clones to get a special name? Or did she give everyone nicknames?**

No, just me. It was because of an incident on Secaya. It's a grassland planet in the outskirts of the Mid Rim. At the time I was a nobody, I mean literally just another number in the 300th, still fresh from the training facilities of Kamino. Then there was this stint on Secaya, and Maris got herself captured. The Magician worked out an extraction plan and put me on the rescue team. There were twenty five of us, I think, or maybe it was thirty. I can't remember. Anyway, there were about twenty five or so of us, and we snuck into the camp at night. Secaya doesn't have a moon, so the nights get very dark there. Sometimes you couldn't even see the guy five feet in front of you. I was sure we would get caught by a droid, but we found Maris without getting caught. She was shackled to the wall, hands and feet and all, and it looked like she hadn't eaten or slept for days. We got her off the wall, and on the way out a mouse droid spotted us. Of all things, a mouse droid. They're almost always harmless, but sometimes they're used for surveillance. We had to decide to shoot it or risk leaving it alone, and well we decided to risk leaving it alone since a shot from our rifles might alert the droids anyway.

 **Mhm. Right.**

And it turned out we were dead wrong. Suddenly droids began firing at us. We got out with Maris, and we realized some of our guys were still in the droid camp, and for whatever reason they hadn't followed us out. So I went back in and started looking for them, and I would find one and lead him back out, and then I would go back in and look for more.

 **By yourself?**

Yeah.

 **So how many times did you go back in?**

I went back in three times, and we didn't lose a single man. That's when the Magician promoted me to lieutenant, and then Maris gave me my nickname.

 **Does it have any significance?**

Sorry?

 **The name "Shiloh." Does it mean anything?**

If it does she never told me.

 **And how was it - How did it feel being promoted to lieutenant?**

Well I got my own platoon, which was nice. We called ourselves Wampa Squadron. We were a baseline scout platoon with twenty nine men and ten speeder bikes, and my second-in-command was Sergeant Major CT-4477. I called him Luka, and it stuck and everyone started calling him that too. We became very good friends. Maris made my platoon her personal unit, and so we did a lot of special operations with her.

 **Sorry to back-track, but why Wampa Squadron?**

Because they're terrifying white beasts, and that's what we wanted our enemies to see us as.

 **And when did all this happen?**

What? My work in the platoon?

 **No, I mean, when did you become a lieutenant?**

That was in the second year of the war.

 **You moved up rank quickly. Within your first year in the army.**

Clones were dying so quickly it wasn't too long before grunts were promoted to replace their superiors. On some planets, the life expectancy of a clone was three days. On others, it was six to ten hours. The 300th had three commanders before the position finally dropped to me, or at least I served under three commanders. There might have been others before I was enlisted.

 **When did you become the commander of the 300th? Could you give some details on how that happened?**

I became commander in the middle of the third year of the war. It was at Geonosis, at the Second Battle of Geonosis, and the Magician had made his first big mistake since I served under him. Everything had been a disaster, and we were bunkered in one of the Geonosian mud spires and defending it from thousands of droids and Geonosians. There must have been twenty or thirty thousand of them, easy. The Magician was injured and the entire 300th was trapped in the spire, and we all thought we were going to die. Hell I thought we were going to die. Our commander was mortally wounded and he finally died after some fifteen or so minutes, which feels like hours in a combat situation. I don't know why, but I suddenly got it in my head to do something about our situation, and I had Luka at my side, which helped. So we calmed the men down and reorganized. Maris had to step in for her master, which was a big deal for her.

We rallied and started picking off the droids better, but we needed help. Our communications were being jammed, so we needed to reach another Jedi on Geonosis. It was a suicide mission, but it needed to be done. So I organized Wampa Squadron and got us all speeder bikes, and we got ready to plow straight through the droid army. I had Luka stay back and lead the 300th while I was gone. While we rode our speeders through the droid army, the boys at the spire would provide us cover with their rifles. And Maris Brood went with us. I protested, but she ranked over all of us, so what she said went.

 **Must have been terrifying.**

Oh I was scared shitless. But there we were riding our speeders to our death. I lost most of my men, but Maris and me and some others made it. I lost over twenty of my platoon, and that was real hard. We got to a Republic base point and found Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi. Next thing we're on a gunship flying back to the spire with some thirty-odd other gunships behind us and ten walkers (AT-TEs) below us. We gave the droids hell and then some, and the Geonosians all started flying away, like when you run at a flock of birds gathered on the ground. We lost a lot of good men that day, but not as many as we should have. I don't think the Magician ever fully forgave himself though.

 **So then you became commander of the 300th?**

[CT-1836 nods yes.] Me and Rancisis rebuilt the 300th, and then I rebuilt Wampa Squadron, and it remained my personal unit, and Luka was still my right hand man. I had him promoted to Major.

 **So why was your - Why were you still called lieutenant and not commander?**

That was my choice, actually. I liked the ring of lieutenant better, and Rancisis made an exception for me, and everyone else obliged me. He just cared about results and said my title was just a trifle, so long as I gave him his results.

 **And how was it being a commander?**

It was a lot more responsibility. The Magician valued my input on strategy all of a sudden, which was nice but surprising, and I'm not sure I ever really got used to that. He was such a brilliant mind, it was weird to see him consult someone like me, just a soldier.

 **Let's talk about that incident above Coruscant, the one that put you on the map, so to speak.**

Well it was the Battle of Coruscant. A massive Separatist fleet had reached Coruscant in what was the single largest attack of the war, and the Emperor had been captured. He was still the Chancellor then, but he was basically an Emperor at that point, he had garnered so much political clout. And so all the clones were scrambled, anyone they could find near enough to reach them. We were stationed at a Deep Core world called Tython, just a forest and some old ruins, when we got the transmission. I remember it so clearly. I was at our base, and we had a clunky old communications transmitter, and the top plate was missing so you could see all the wires. Suddenly it came to life with an urgent message from Coruscant that it was under attack and all nearby units were needed immediately.

 **How did it feel when you heard that transmission?**

Scared. I remember wondering if this was the day the Separatists won the war. So I told Rancisis and we shipped the entire 300th to Coruscant immediately. And the situation really was dire. I remember when we jumped out of hyperspace and saw all the Separatist dreadnoughts looming over the planet, surrounded by swarms of vulture droids. I wasn't prepared for that. It was like a tsunami was about to crash into Coruscant. Republic star destroyers were rising out of the planet to meet them, and other star destroyers were blipping out of hyperspace from nearby systems. The whole thing felt grim, I remember that.

We started attacking in our Venator-class star destroyer - it was Rancisis's flagship, and he had named it the _Tarot Card_. And we saw the star destroyers of other Jedi Masters, even their personal starfighters surrounded by formations of C-17s (ARC-170s). It felt like we were witnessing the end of the world.

None of us were pilots, so we decided to invade one of the dreadnoughts and take it over. Rancisis took his own starfighter - it was another ETA-2, the kind all the Jedi were using at the time - and Maris stayed in the _Tarot Card_ and concentrated fire on the other dreadnoughts.

I took Wampa Squadron and two hundred clones - I mean two hundred including Wampa Squadron - and had us all stand in the hangar in rows. We were all wearing space-proof gear with oxygen masks. Maris flew the _Tarot_ really close above one of the dreadnoughts and steered perpendicular to it. The hangar doors opened, and in front of us was the top of the dreadnought. The sucker was huge. I couldn't see where it started and ended from inside the hangar. We ran out the hanger and let the dreadnought's artificial gravity pull us to it. There were anti-spacecraft turrets all over the hull, and they turned and started firing on us. So we fought the turrets while fifteen or twenty men worked on drilling holes into the cruiser. We finally breached the hull and made it inside. Droids were everywhere. We fought our way through the halls and rooms and reached the bridge and cleared it of all the droids. I lost many brothers getting there. Luka was with those who died.

 **I'm so sorry.**

I had to make my brain cold about it and not think about it. That's just how we all dealt with that sort of thing. So we got to the bridge, but we didn't know how to fly the damn thing. The turrets were still shooting our own, and vulture droids and tri-fighters were pouring out of the hangars. So I decided to ram the whole thing into another dreadnought. We weren't pilots, but we could at least do some basic steering with the manual sticks. We set for a course collision with the nearest cruiser and ran for the escape pods. We all landed safely on Coruscant while the two cruisers went boom.

 **If you're okay with me asking, how many of your men made it back? You said you attacked the cruiser with two hundred men.**

One hundred and fifty five. We lost a lot of men, but thankfully it wasn't a massacre.

 **And what happened once you all landed?**

We hopped on another star destroyer that was just taking off and joined the battle again and helped however we could.

 **That's...really intense.**

It was our job, and the Republic was at stake.

 **And after? What happened after, when the battle was over?**

Well the Chancellor was saved, and Count Dooku was killed. The Separatists pulled back, it was such a catastrophic failure for them. We weren't in too great a shape either, to be honest. The Republic had taken a big hit. We lost star destroyers, starfighters, clones, and even Jedi.

Me and my men were reunited with Rancisis and everyone on the _Tarot_ , and the Chancellor had heard about my stunt with the dreadnought and personally thanked me for my service. Even shook my hand. Then we were sent back to the Outer Rim as if nothing happened, back to fight more droids.

 **But things weren't back to normal really, since Order 66 was just around the corner.**

Right. Exactly.

 **Where were you sent to, and was that where you received those famous words from the Emperor?**

We were sent to a minor swamp moon orbiting Grand Sinto V. The moon was called Ana. There were big mosquitoes there. We called them birds, they were so big. And the fog was so thick there we couldn't see the tops of trees right above us. We were battling the droids when I received a message from the Chancellor. The Magician was in his tent, so I called Wampa Squadron over and had them surround the tent. We started blasting at it from all sides, and we didn't stop until the tent fell on top of itself.

 **So that's how Rancisis died?**

Yeah. That was the death of the Magician. We confirmed the body, and it wasn't a pretty sight. He didn't know what hit him.

 **What about Maris?**

We never found her. She must have seen something or sensed it and ran off.

 **Do you regret killing Rancisis? I mean, you fought beside him for so long. It didn't - I mean, it didn't bother you at all?**

No, it didn't.

 **Orders are orders sort of thing.**

Order 66 was my order, and I followed it through.

 **Have you ever heard the term "meat droid" before?**

Of course.

("Meat droid" is a derogatory term used to refer to clones. Similar phrases include "Droids with human faces," "Red flesh, droid bones," and "Kaminoan shams." The term was in use throughout the Clone Wars, but it became popular after Order 66, when the clones killed the Jedi without hesitation like, as some would argue, droids following computer programming.)

 **Does it - and I'm not trying to get tabloid here - does it bother you, or offend you when people call you that?**

No. I had a job to do. I don't care what other people think, and frankly none of us do.

 **What about the clones who didn't turn at Order 66?**

A rare and defective few. I mean, out of the millions of clones, only two or three refused to kill their Jedi. It was less than rare - it was astronomical.

 **Fair enough. So now that we've caught up to the present, let's talk about your future. Is it true you're joining the Immortals?**

Yes. I begin the training in three months.

 **Can you give any details about the training process?**

I don't know much, and what little I do know I'm not allowed to talk about. It's intensive for sure. It's supposed to be the most difficult training of any unit in the clone army. The only specific I can give is that at the end is something called Hell Night. It's living in a dark windowless room in complete isolation for six months.

 **What's the purpose of that?**

The whole point of being an Immortal is that you're completely isolated. You take a vow of silence after completing your training and are never seen without your uniform on, even with other Immortals. It's a life of solitude, so they prepare you with six months in iso. Food is slid under your door on a tray three times a day, and that's the closest you ever get to human contact.

 **Do you know anyone else who's become an Immortal?**

I know Commanders Fordo and Doom are going through the isolation chambers right now. Other than them, no, not really.

 **Won't the training cause severe psychological damage? Does the Empire have any way of helping you guys cope with that?**

The training changes you, but that's the point. The Emperor wants you to be unrecognizable after Hell Night. The Immortals are the most elite team of soldiers in the galaxy, and the training is geared for the producing the best.

 **What happens if a clone fails the training?**

Only the best clones are selected for the training. The Empire looks at your military record, psyche, leadership qualities, and other factors. That said, most clones still fail the training, or they break during Hell Night. Clones who can't handle it or simply don't cut it are sent to Outer Rim outposts.

 **Like Ana.**

[CT-1836 laughs.] Right. Exactly like Ana.

 **Well that's all I have. Is there anything else you want to add before we close? Maybe something we haven't covered?**

Nah. I'm good.

 **Thank you so much for your time, and for your service.**

Thank you.


	5. The Tale of Vree Crayetoke Clayake Vroo

_"We are creating the experimental prototype prison of tomorrow. It is called the Iron Crater. The prison will take its cue from the latest ideas and technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of the Empire. And it will be a model for all future prisons to come. Using the same blueprints and philosophies, a prison resembling this prototype could be planned and built on every planet in the Empire."_

-Pollux Hax, "From Stone to Steel Foundations: On the Transition from Classical Republic to Neo-Imperial Architectural Style and Their Chief Examples"

The Tale of Vree Crayetoke Clayake Vroo, or the Prisoner's Tale

The moment Vree beheld the maximum security prison known as the Iron Crater, she knew she would die there and was in that sense dead already. She in that moment realized she was standing in the maw of the behemoth machine known as the Galactic Empire, against which she was a small speck, a cluster of electrons drifting through space. Her life was expendable, her identity anonymous, and her memories insignificant. Here in the Iron Crater, she was prisoner 10862-02 and that was all. She was just a number, and she knew it when the clones tattooed that number onto her forearm.

Vree Krayetoke Clayake Vroo, or simply Vree, was a Draethos, one of the scaly, blue-skinned humanoids from the marsh planet Blite. She was a bounty hunter, and she was also scum. Throughout the Clone Wars she had captured and killed many high profile targets, but she was most famous for killing three Jedi with a single sniper shot. Thus she was infamous throughout the galaxy and particularly on Republic and Republic-allied systems, for she killed many Jedi and even Republic senators during the war. And Sheev Palpatine, at the time still Chancellor of the Republic, issued in response over a dozen press releases and televised statements promising her capture, but for reasons never explained she seemed to evade Republic authorities at every turn. "We will not permit this single thug to terrorize the good people of the Republic," Palpatine would say. He asked for the good people to remain patient and for their solidarity and support in this ongoing case. She was never caught during the whole of the war.

Shortly after Order 66, a wealthy and bitter Separatist sympathizer hired Vree to assassinate Palpatine, now the newly elected Emperor. Vree, who had alluded the Republic for so long, didn't even infiltrate the Emperor's Executive Building before she was surrounded by the entire Imperial Police and arrested. "I have vanquished a great enemy of the Empire," the Emperor announced. "May Imperial Peace last forever."

As for the Separatist sympathizer who had hired her, his house mysteriously burned down with him and his family trapped inside it. Meanwhile Vree was transported by the Imperial Police to the Iron Crater.

The Iron Crater was only recently constructed, in the wake of Order 66, and it was an architectural marvel. It was the largest prison in the galaxy and deemed the most secure in history. It was located underground, deep beneath Coruscant's crust, far below even the planet's Undercity. The inside of the prison was a vast open space designed like a colisseum: its walls were perfectly cylindrical, and the complex was a hundred or so stories tall, and it was grotesquely wide, as wide as the open grassy plains of Naboo. The walls, floor and ceiling were colorless durasteel, and the walls were evenly checkered with an uncountable number of prison cells. Each prison cell was sealed off by a set of horizontal bars of glowing white plasma.

In the cells were many humans but mostly aliens, some the likes of which Vree had never seen before. In one cell was an alien pale like mushrooms, and the alien didn't have eyes or a nose, and it was tall and emaciated, and it stood perfectly erect and still as it eerily watched from behind the plasma bars of its cell. In another was a slimy worm creature with a mouth for a face. The mouth gaped open and revealed a throat lined all the way down to the back of its gullet with cragged, blade-sharp teeth. And in a third was a spidery android with needle-thin legs and with a glass jar set atop it. A brain floated and sloshed inside the jar.

But what was most peculiar about the place was the bizarre object levitating in the dead center of the prison. It appeared to be a massive orb of solid glass, and it was black and shiny and almost reflective like wet ink spilled fresh from a bottle. There was not a single detail or marking or scratch on the orb, which hovered unmoving in suspended animation. Vree wondered what the black orb was and what exactly it did.

And around the giant black orb and in front of the rows and columns of prison cells and all throughout the vast space in between, the Imperial Police - clones plated in white and red plastoid armor - patrolled and watched. They stood on small, squared hovering platforms, and each clone carried and automatic rifle on their person, and they also carried a little remote that directed the platforms where to go. The clones hardly moved and seemed like robotic turrets mounted onto the hovering machinery.

Meanwhile Vree stood crammed between two armed clones on one of the hovering platforms. Her hands were cuffed, and she studied the prisoners in the cells as she passed them.

Though not all the aliens physically could and therefore did not, all humans and virtually all alien humanoids wore clothes resembling pajamas: a white shirt and white pants, both with orange stripes running all the way down them. Vree wore the same, and the fabric felt coarse like sackcloth on her skin.

Suddenly her platform halted in front of one of the holding cells. There was a short electric buzz, and the plasma bars shrank away into the walls. A clone undid Vree's cuffs, and the two men shoved her into the cell, and the plasma bars reactivated and closed behind her. the cell was very small and furnished with nothing more than a paper-thin strip of a mattress slapped onto a metal bed frame that was bolted onto the floor. The entire cell and the bed frame were pure durasteel. There wasn't a pillow or bed sheets, only the mattress. Vree tested the mattress, and it was hard like a slab of hewn rock. The top of it wasn't even made from cheap synthetic fabric like her clothes but felt plasticky and glossy like some recycled tarp material. Vree laid in silence on her bed for some time, watching the clones in the red and white armor go by.

Vree was a Draethos, a species widely considered ugly for their scaly skin, bald heads, and for what appeared to be a severe overbite. Their faces almost resembled jawless skulls, and many called them swamp skulls for it. But for all their superficial shortcomings, the Draethos had one unique advantage over most other species. Draethos were telepathic, able to communicate to others from great distances by mere thought. Naturally there were limitations: a Draethos could rarely communicate over more than a distance of four to five hundred meters, for instance. A Draethos could only communicate with one person at a time, and that Draethos was limited to communication only, unable to probe the other's mind. Still, communication was communication, and the clones seemed unaware of Vree's genetically-endowed capabilities. For her, it was the one thing that might help her retain her sanity in this prison.

She reached out with her mind to talk to some of the inmates near her. "Hello?" she tried with one. "Shit. I'm hearing voices. That can't be good," was the response. "Relax. I'm a telepath. I'm communicating to you from another cell. I just want to talk." "Get out of my head, witch."

Vree tried another. "Hello? Can you hear me? I'm in another cell. I'm a telepath." "Screw you. It's just another Imperial test. Well I'm not stupid. Try someone else, sweetheart." Or: "I bet you're one of those swamp skulls from that Outer Rim world. Well I hate to break it to you, bitch, but you're not taking over _my_ mind. Yeah, I've heard the stories." Or still: "I've lost my mind. I've gone crazy." "No, you're not going crazy. Just hear me out." "By the Force, make it stop." "Calm down. Just listen." "Make it stop! Shut up shut up shut up! Please make it go away!"

All her attempts failed rather quickly and all in similar ways, except for a brief and strange conversation that went like this: "Hello?" "What's this?" "I'm a telepath. I'm trapped in one of these prison cells, like you." "Okay, thank the stars. For a second I thought I was losing it, like I've been in here for too long." "How long _have_ you been here?" "I don't know. A month? Maybe two. It's hard to keep track of time in this place." "Well, you're not alone. I'm here with you, in a manner of speaking." "Yeah. You know, you have a nice voice. I know this is going to sound weird, but would you mind describing how you look? To put a face to your voice." "I'm a Draethos." "I don't know what that is. How about sizes? Body type, you know? Just curious." Vree didn't answer him and severed the telepathic connection immediately. It seemed she would be completely alone in this prison after all, telepathy or no. Everyone here was either paranoid, untrusting, skittish, or a freak.

It was a painfully long time before Vree got to eat. Throughout the entire prison, clones went from cell to cell with large stacks of metal trays on their hover platforms. A clone came to her cell and slid a tray onto the floor just under the horizontal bars of white plasma. Vree picked up the metal tray and frowned. The food was a gray mush, accompanied by a small dry brick that smelled faintly like bread.

"What's this supposed to be?" Vree asked. The clone said "Meatloaf and a biscuit" and moved on to the next cell. Vree sniffed the gray mush, and it didn't smell like anything. She sat down on her bed holding the tray of food. There were no eating utensils. The people running this prison were precautious, and she was impressed. Still, how was she supposed to eat the meatloaf? With her hands? She picked up the biscuit and scooped it into the mush. (Biscuits were just edible spoons anyway, Vree reasoned.) She took a big bite, then spat out the food. She started coughing.

"Quiet in there," barked a patrolling clone.

"Sorry for choking on your shit food," Vree challenged.

"Wait until Diset. Every Diset we put all your leftovers from the week into a blender and call it the Milkshake Surprise." Vree didn't answer him, and the clone said: "That's what I thought. Now shut up and stay quiet. If I catch you talking out of turn again, I'll take away you food privileges for tomorrow."

The clone continued his rounds past the cells on her floor. She must have been somewhere near the sixtieth or seventieth floor. Judging by her position in relation to the black sphere floating in the center of the prison, it seemed she was just shy above the midway point.

She dipped the bread in the meatloaf again and attempted a second bite. She made a face and felt a reflexive vomit burning like acid in her throat. She gave up on the mush and took a small bite of the bread by itself. It tasted fine but was rock hard and staler than sand on Tatooine. She finished the bread but left the gray mush alone, and after a time the clones made their rounds taking the trays back. Vree slid the tray under the plasma bars and back to the clone. "I see you didn't touch your meatloaf," the clone said. Vree stayed quiet. "Give it a week. You'll be licking your tray into a sparkling mirror." And with that he left.

The clone it turned out was more or less right. About two or three weeks later and Vree was devouring whatever they gave her. She would shamelessly lick the tray for anything left, a smear, a crumb, a dribble. For the whole of the week, Vree tinkered with ideas of escape, and for that week she had not a single idea worth holding onto. She considered pretending to be sick to be taken to the infirmary, check for blind spots there, but the prison she learned didn't have one. She discovered this on Diset, when she started throwing up the Milkshake Surprise all over her cell floor. The clones didn't pay any attention to her puking. Afterwards, mouse-sized sanitation droids crawled into her cell past the plasma bars, cleaned the mess, and crawled back out, beeping and whistling as they left.

New prisoners were bring added to the prison daily, and always individually. On rare occasions, a clone in completely red armor the bright hue of blood would escort a prisoner to the cell. Vree didn't know if the red clones were a special type of clone, like high ranking officers or special operations units, or if in fact it was the same individual clone every time. She thought about asking one of the other prisoners telepathically but decided against it. She doubted they knew anyway.

As time passed Vree became roughly more familiar with the types of prisoners being brought in. Some would yell things like "Long live the Republic!" or "The Confederacy will rise again!" as they were being escorted to their cells. Others Vree actually recognized: famous bounty hunters, Separatist senators, and on the rarest occasions even Jedi. One of the prisoners brought in was just a boy, no more than ten years old. Ad whenever she recognized a Jedi in the white and orange prison garb, the Jedi was always accompanied by a solid red clone. The red clones must be Jedi hunters, Vree decided, and whenever one of the red clones came escorting someone to a cell, she assumed the prisoner must be a Jedi.

The days became rote nothingness. There were two meals a day, and every night the prison cell lights shut off and the prisoners were ordered to sleep, and every morning the lights the lights flashed back on automatically. During the night protocol, the clones would activate their helmet flashlights and check every room to make sure the inmates were asleep, or at lying in bed pretending to sleep. If a prisoner was caught out of bed, he or she didn't get breakfast the next morning, so of course a prisoner was never seen out of their bed at night. Night protocol was only around five hours or so long, and the brevity of it was gradually taking its toll on Vree. She fell asleep once during day hours, and when a clone spotted her asleep, he ordered her to get out of the bed. She didn't hear him because she was, well, asleep. So the clone deactivated the plasma bars, charged into the cell, dragged her off the bed and onto the hard durasteel floor, and he beat her right there on the floor. "Don't let me catch snoozing off again," he said and left.

Vree lost track of the days. She fell into a cow-like stupor, with glazed sunken eyes and without any facial expressions or ever speaking a word. The Iron Crater had broken her. She had no fight left. She had lost a lot of weight, and her ribs were protruding more with every passing month.

Then one day, one of the solid red clones - reddies, Vree called them - came in with a Jedi whom Vree not only recognized but had once met: Jocasta Nu, wearing the orange-striped pajamas of the Iron Crater. Jocasta had been the librarian of the Jedi Temple's Archives before the destruction of the Temple. She was virtually a living library herself, having worked in the Archives for so long. She looked stoic, even serene beside the reddy. She must have been in her eighties or nineties by now. She wouldn't last long here, Vree thought.

The reddy put Jocasta into her cell and left. The cell wasn't too far from Vree's, and Vree decided reach out telepathically to the Jedi.

"Jocasta, it's me, Vree. I'm the Draethos who blew a hole into the Temple wall that one time. Do you remember me?"

"Ah, yes. The bounty hunter. Funny odds meeting you here." "Not as funny as seeing you in pants. Orange isn't your color, by the way." "One must make do with what's available. And how's the bounty hunter business going these days?" "Slow. Haven't had a client in months." "Oh, don't fret. I can be your client. Kill the Emperor for me, would you?" "That's a tough stint you're asking for. How much are you willing to pay?" "Unfortunately, all my bank accounts have been frozen until further notice, but I can pay you with enlightening Jedi wisdom." "Deal. I'll start on that bounty right now." "Good, and do make it quick. I'm old, and my arthritis is killing me. A frail woman like me only has so much longer to live, you know."

In this way the two started talking. At first, it was only intermittently and brief. "Hey, how's the meatloaf and biscuit?" "Oh, is that what that was? I thought it was shit next to a harder piece of shit." "So you didn't eat?" "My dear Vree, Jedi are trained to live off the mystic energies of the Force for sustenance, if the situation is dire enough. Thus the Force supplants our need for food. Unfortunately, the Force makes my ulcer flare up. So yes, I ate the shit."

But as the weeks passed, their conversations grew longer, more personal even, more so out of a mutual and desperate need for entertainment than anything else.

"Back in my younger days, I was in love with Count Dooku. We were both in love. But Jedi aren't permitted to love, and so nothing ever happened between us," Jocasta had said.

"Do you regret that?"

"Well, knowing that he was a psychotic power-hungry war-mongering Sith Lord, no. But for a very long time, yes. I very much so regretted it. And to be completely honest, a part of me still does."

"He never told you his plans to leave the Jedi Order?"

"Oh, yes. Many times. And I knew he would do it too. He asked me to leave with him, but I was a Jedi, and the Order was as much a part of me as I was of it, and how could I leave it all just for a man, even if I loved that man? I believe he was genuine at the time. He thought the Jedi Council had become corrupt, that it was intermingling too much with the politicians in the Galactic Senate, and that its political interests were making it power hungry. He was right, of course, even if I didn't see it at the time. I suppose the Emperor found him sometime after he left and deceived him into joining the Dark Side. The man I loved had died long before his untimely decapitation."

"Imagine if you had left with him. Maybe he never would have turned. Or maybe you both would have."

"When you get to be my age, you'll see that it doesn't do you any good to dwell on could-haves, would-haves, might-haves and should-haves. It will only make you regretful and sad. I made choices, and I must accept the consequences of those choices. The Jedi have seen the future from time to time, but not even we are shown what could have been."

"You sound like a proverb cookie."

"Jedi wisdom, my dear. Consider it early payment for that Emperor contract. Still waiting on that, by the way."

A few days later, while Vree was eating pasta (thick soggy noodles slopped onto the tray and mixed with green vegetable pods for flavor), a reddy brought in another Jedi. Vree didn't recognize the Jedi, but she heard him yelling "Traitors! Traitors!" at the clones. The clones ignored him.

"I've been meaning to ask you, who are the clones in red?" Vree said to Jocasta. Jocasta didn't answer, and there was an uncomfortable silence for some time. Vree tried again. "Jocasta, are you there?" Still nothing. "Granny, snap out of it. I know you old geezers like to sit and reminisce on the golden years, but it's getting boring over here. Talk to me." And then one final attempt: "Jocasta?" The woman wasn't answering, and Vree soon found out why. A clone passed by Jocasta's cell. "Jedi, wake up," Vree overheard him say, but only faintly. There apparently wasn't a response, because the clone disappeared into the cell. Vree wasn't sure, but she thought she head the clone say, "Ah, hell." The clone was back out of the cell waving at some clones and signaling for them to come help. They put Jocasta's corpse on a hovering platform and took her away. Likely she simply had died of old age, but Vree would never know for sure what killed her. Vree was suddenly alone and felt it with all its potency, like she was stranded in the black silence of space, a lonely cosmonaut among dead planets and drifting meteors.

It was then that Vree decided to escape. She spent night after night figuring, tinkered with ideas, and inspected them at every angle and in every light. She finally came up with a plan and decided it could work.

She remembered how during her first week here the sanitation droids had entered her cell when she threw up the Milkshake Surprise. So that night, right after dinner, she shoved two fingers to the back of her throat and made herself sick. And sure enough, the tiny sanitation droids came to clean up the vomit. While the droids cleaned, she picked one up. It started screeching, but she slowly twisted its head until the head was severed with dangling wires, and it stopped. The other droids didn't notice or seem to mind, and soon they went their merry way back out of her cell.

Meanwhile Vree pried off the droid's outer shell. The inside was nothing but wires and skeletal piping. Vree checked for clones nearby or approaching, and when she saw nobody, she brought the metal droid plate to the plasma bars in front of her cell. She used the plasma like a grindstone and shaved the plate into something of a crude dagger. She did her work slowly and quietly, then went to her mattress, lifted it up, sliced into it with her knife. She then stuffed the droid corpse inside it. She lowered the mattress back down, and soon the lights shut off and it was night protocol. The clones didn't know what happened and suspected nothing. She laid in bed chest-up with the dagger pressed under the small of her back.

Vree had her plan ready. In the morning, when the lights shut back on, she will pretend to still be sleeping. A clone will come to her cell and tell her to get out of bed, and when she refuses, he'll deactivate the plasma bars and go into the cell to beat her. But then she'll use the knife to slice his throat open, and he'll die without making so much as a squeak. She'll only have some thirty or forty seconds, but she'll change into his uniform. Then she'll sneak out of the prison unnoticed using the hovering platform. It would be risky, and certainly require swiftness and no shortage of deft limberness to put on the clone armor, but it was the only real chance she had of escaping.

That night Vree didn't sleep. She was too anxious for tomorrow. But suddenly the lights of her cell flashed on. It can't be morning, she thought. It couldn't be. It had only been some thirty minutes since the lights had shut off. Her mind raced to process the possibility that she had fallen asleep without realizing it or had simply lost track of time in her thoughts, but it seemed impossible that morning was already here. Nevertheless she pretended t be asleep as her mind raced.

"Wake up," a clone said. She didn't budge. She felt the dagger lying flat under her back.

There was an electronic buzz and the sound of the plasma bars deactivating. She heard the sounds of footsteps on the durasteel floor. She readied to grab the knife and thrust it into the clone's neck. It would have to be fast. She felt her muscles tense up as she mentally prepared herself.

But the footsteps stopped near the front of the cell, away from the bed. The clone didn't approach any further. Something's wrong, thought Vree. Her heartbeat was pounding, and she felt the throbbing in her chest and in her throat, and she wondered if the clone could hear it.

"Wake up," the clone repeated. Vree didn't move.

There were more sets of footsteps. There was more than one clone in the room now. Vree felt herself panic. She didn't know what to do, and she waited, eyes closed.

"Inmate ten eighty-six two oh two: I know you're awake. I also know about the knife under you. I want you to carefully get out of your bed without touching your knife. If you do, we shoot you."

Vree felt her stomach lurch. She opened her eyes. Two clones stood with their rifles aimed at her, and in between them was a clone in blood red armor. A reddy.

Vree slowly sat up and raised her arms.

"Good girl. Now get out of the bed," said the reddy. Vree obeyed. The reddy continued: "Now stand against the wall. Don't drop your arms. Keep them up."

Vree was carefully approaching the wall when suddenly the two clones with the rifles barreled into her and slammed her onto it. She felt the wind knocked out of her and she gasped for air, and the clones held her pressed against the wall. One clone had his black-gloved hand on one half of her face, pinning the other half onto the cold durasteel.

"Nice knife," said the reddy. "Okay, let her go."

The weight of the two men evaporated off her instantly, and she fell to the floor. She looked up at the reddy holding the crude knife.

"I have a personal code not to toy with my prey, so I'll be straight forward. I have specific orders not kill a soul in this place. But I'll be damned if I just revoke your food privileges for a day or two. You deserve worse than that."

Vree didn't answer. She was just breathing hard. She was finally starting to regain her breath.

"Oh, right. You're confused because you don't know who I am."

"You're one of the Jedi hunters," Vree said, and without realizing it she had spoken to him telepathically. The clone wasn't fazed by the mental breach.

"No. I'm _the_ Jedi hunter. I'm also the warden of this place. I designed it, I oversee it. You're in my house," he answered aloud.

So there was only one reddy after all. The red clone had always been the same one. Every time. The reddy was the warden of the Iron Crater.

"You're probably wondering how I knew about your little blacksmith project. The answer has been staring you in the eyes the whole time." The warden strolled to the cell's entrance and pointed. Vree realized he was gesturing to the giant sphere floating in the middle of the prison, the sphere black like ink. "That thing floating there is a camera droid. It observes every single prison cell here simultaneously, twenty-four standard hours a day. If anything appears wrong, it notifies me. It saw that stunt you pulled with the sanitation droid and alerted me. I watched the footage."

Vree tried to process what he was saying. She couldn't breathe.

"All the clones I have here are mostly unnecessary. They're just smoke and mirrors. They feed you and tell you when to go to bed and when to wake up. Babysitters packing heat. The camera droid is what makes this prison what it is. The droid _is_ the prison." The warden looked down and shook his head. "I'm not barbaric. I'm a soldier and I like efficiency. I don't know what you were planning to do with this knife, but I can only assume it was meant to harm my men or aid in your escape or both. Either way, your actions have consequences." The warden nodded to the two clones. "Seize her."

The clones did. They forced her up so her toes barely touched the ground. The warden grabbed his pistol and fired at both of Vree's knees. She shrieked. The warden left the cell and returned to the hovering platform. "Let her go," he said. "We're done here. She's done." The clones obeyed and dropped Vree. She hit the floor hard, and she gripped her knees wailing. The clones left her there and joined the warden on the hovering platform. The plasma bars sealed the cell shut, and the lights to Vree's cell shut off again, leaving her in the cold and lonely darkness, save for the faint pale light coming from the plasma bars.

The warden and the other clones vanished from the cell's entrance. And there was Vree, now moaning in pain and rocking on the floor, and her cheeks were wet. She couldn't move her legs, and she likely would never walk again. For the warden, that meant she would never try to escape again. He wasn't malevolent, just robotically efficient. He took no joy from hurting her, but it didn't pluck a single chord in his conscience either.

It was still night protocol, and after thirty or so minutes a clone came by and scanned her cell with the flashlight mounted onto his helmet. He saw her on the floor. He ordered her to get back in bed or she's lose breakfast privileges in the morning. Vree, trying her hardest to stifle her sob and mostly but not completely succeeding, dragged herself across the floor with her arms. She pulled herself onto the bed and grabbed her legs one at a time and flopped them onto the rock hard mattress.

And that night, with tears running down her cheeks, Vree tried to comfort herself with memories of her home planet Blite. She thought of fogs and lily pad-covered oceans and somber black willows and fireflies. She thought of the shrieking of frogs and the popping of bubbles from the mouths of fish and the wing beats of herons. She thought of the smells of freshwater and the smells of moss and lichen. And most of all she thought of the red moon that hung in the starry night sky above her planet, blood red like the warden, and she knew she would never see it again.

She cried for a long time, and the pain never ceased, but she did after a long time finally fall asleep, and she dreamt of her green planet and her red moon.


	6. The Tale of Keeda Reltu

_"Order 66 was the Final Solution to the Jedi problem. Yet the Jedi persist like lice. If we don't find them all soon, they might escape forever and rebuild their cult in secret, and then they would destroy this fledgling Empire."_

-Pollux Hax, from a published statement sent to all Imperial senators and military officers

The Tale of Keeda Reltu, or the First Jedi's Tale

The name Coruscant literally translates "the blue moon above," and named after the first settlers for the sapphire moon that once hung in the planet's sky. That moon fell out of orbit and drifted away long ago, tens of thousands of years before even the days of the Republic, when the land was still green and singing with water. In those days there were oceans, and there were rivers that wrapped the land with cool blue fingers that careened with the hills and valleys and under the shadows of trees. And birds flew and sang, though no one remembers the colors of their feathers nor their songs, for birds fly no more over Coruscant. And when the moon vanished, the people believed the gods had abandoned them. But they passed down the memory of that moon, and its memory survives among a rare few.

Indeed, the world had changed since those nights filled with blue moonlight. Now the seas and many rivers were gone, and the birds were disappeared, and now was a planetary metropolis of permacrete and durasteel, the slow work of a thousand years of progress. And the planet thrummed with life.

And amid the progress, and amid the skyscrapers and teeming life smog and oceans of permacrete, a Jedi Knight neamed Keeda Reltu moved with the crowds.

Keeda was a mutt, half human and half Twi'lek, and so she blended well with the odd alien populations on Coruscant. She inherited her mother's emerald skin, but she otherwise looked completely human. During the Clone Wars, Keeda's beauty was legendary, but the events of Order 66 had taken their toll on her. She had aged greatly since the destruction of the Temple and the slaughter of her friends and her master, and nothing was harder to bear than the death of her apprentice, gunned down by the clone she trusted most. Her green skin was no longer silken and glowing but was dryer now and slightly sagging at the cheeks. She had deep lines around her mouth, and her ink black hair had dulled. She remained in communion with the Force, but her connection was not as intimate as it had been.

With Keeda was a young boy named Ziro Okana. He was a human boy, olive skinned and with shaggy black hair. He was frightened, and his detached master offered little comfort. Like Keeda, his master too had died during Order 66, and Keeda pitied him and offered herself as his new master. She trained him vigorously in the use of the Force and in Jedi knowledge, but little in light saber combat, so he practiced for hours daily on his own and developed his own style, and it was polished. He was a quiet boy, and sensitive and observant. Destitute, these two Jedi hid on Coruscant together, unable to acquire funds for transport off the planet, and fearful to trust anyone. They continually heard stories of Jedi disappearing, and they feared for their lives.

The two made their way down the street, and clones were there patrolling nearby. Ziro was scared.

"I think they're looking at us," Ziro said.

"Just keep looking forward. Don't draw attention," Keeda said back.

And blended with the crowd they passed the clones by unnoticed.

Coruscant was a dangerous place for Jedi, and yet so many of them had been stranded on the planet when Darth Vader attacked and destroyed the Jedi Temple. And now Jedi were branded enemies of the Empire, and thanks to the propaganda the citizens viewed them like the fallen kings of some slave-backed empire, power-hungry and corrupt. The anti-Jedi propaganda was rampant, and it was the duty of the every Imperial citizen to report any and all Jedi they might find. And many Jedi were reported and disappeared, and no one knew their fates.

Worse still were the spies. Kubaz aliens lurked in every alleyway and on every rooftop, and they were trained to recognize Jedi by face alone, even in dense crowds, or at least that was the rumor. What was for certain was that if a Kubaz spy did somehow a Jedi, the Jedi would vanish before the next day, no matter where the Jedi hid. And so nowhere was safe on Coruscant.

Keeda and Ziro wlaked closely together down the packed sidewalks, and eventually they turned and entered a small courtyard lined with restaurants and bars and little antique shops. There was also a dry cleaners there, and just outside it an alien with tentacles for arms swept with a simple wooden broom.

"Menzel," Keeda said.

"The alien looked up. "Ah, Keeda! How are you?" he said and set the broom against the wall.

"I'm well," she said. Meanwhile Ziro said nothing, but he watched intently.

"I want to trade," Keeda continued.

"What do you have for me today?"

"A holocron."

"What is this holocron? I already told you, I want real stuff, not mystic mumbo jumbo and silly trinkets."

"Just let me show it to you first," she said. She reached behind her back and inside her cloak and revealed a small, blue-glowing box. "It holds ancient Jedi knowledge. It's invaluable," she said, holding it.

Menzel waited before taking it, and when he did he inspected every inch of it. He still seemed skeptical. Keeda pursed her lips and swallowed.

"The Empire would pay well for it," she said.

Menzel shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, I can't risk being cheated." He handed Keeda back the holocron. She would have to sell it elsewhere.

"Do you have nothing else?"

"Yes," Keeda said. "I have a Jedi comlink."

"This I can trade."

Keeda reached into her belt and revealed a small Hush-98 model comlink. It was shaped like a pistol grip and fit nicely in the groove of her palm. She handed it over. Menzel smiled.

"I'll give you fifty credits for it," he said, and it was a fraction of the comlink's worth.

"Very well," Keeda said, and she bowed.

Menzel took the comlink with him into the dry cleaning store and after a moment returned with a small bag of credits. He handed her the bag. Keeda took it and bowed again.

"Thank you for your generosity, and may the Force be with you," she said.

Menzel shrugged. "No problem," he said, and he took up his broom and went on sweeping.

People willing to trade with Jedi were growing rarer with every rotation of the planet. Keeda was grateful to Menzel, but the alien wasn't a Jedi sympathizer. He was just an opportunist. Later he would sell the comlink for double what he paid.

Keeda and Ziro made their way back to their hiding place, a nice house in a nice suburban neighborhood. The owner of the house was a jolly man with lanky arms and legs and a rotund, overhanging beer gut. His wife was a tiny, fiery woman and a staunch Imperialist who devoured any propaganda she came across like her husband drank beer. And so for the safety of the two Jedi he kept them hidden in the shed in the backyard, somewhere his wife never once bothered to go. The man was a Jedi sympathizer and so he allowed Keeda and Ziro to stay indefinitely, provided they pay him rent. He once said: "It's terrible what the Emperor's done, just terrible." And he was always friendly so long as they paid, and they paid him well.

Not only did they pay him for rent, but they also paid him for food as well, typically straight from out of his kitchen. And sometimes but rarely he gave them free food from a left over dinner plate.

"Call me Ertie," he had said cheerfully.

And while the Jedi were safe with Ertie, they still had to be careful. "If my wife ever discovers you in my shed, I will deny I knew you were in there or that I know you at all," he had warned. Keeda had only said, "I understand" and left it there. And they were painstakingly careful, never making a noise at any time.

And so today Keeda and Ziro entered through the side gate beside Ertie's house and returned to the shed in his backyard, along with the bag of credits and the unsold holocron. The two Jedi kept quiet and found comfortable spots among the cramped mess of tools and machines and parts, and Keeda closed her eyes and meditated. And meanwhile Ziro kept himself busy and read a holocopy of the journal of an ancient Jedi. In the passage he was reading, the Jedi spoke about finding a bird with a broken wing on the steps of the Temple, and how he was nursing it back to health, and Ziro wondered what the bird looked like. He had grown up on Coruscant and had never once left its atmosphere and visited other worlds, and so he had never seen a real bird in person before.

The shed door suddenly opened, and there standing was Ertie.

"Hello, friends," he chimed.

"Hello, Ertie," Keeda said.

"I have good news. Some cousins of mine are here from Dantooine. They said they can smuggle you in their ship out of Coruscant. They are in the dining room eating right now, and my wife isn't here, and they want to speak with you while she's gone."

"Ertie, this would be a dream come true. But you have to excuse my hesitancy when I say I don't trust them, even if they are your cousins. It isn't safe for Jedi to trust anyone."

"You trusted me."

"We were desperate and had no other options. We're not desperate anymore."

"Keeda, you have my word it's safe. My cousins are good men, honest and hard workers. They are carpenters on Dantooine, and they own a little shop in one of the cities. Simple men. I lived across the street from them when we were kids."

Keeda glanced at Ziro, and the boy was watching with a keen attentiveness. He was always aware and had a reliable intuition, and he would make a fine Jedi one day.

"Very well. There is no harm in hearing what they have to say," she said.

They joined Ertie's cousins in the dining room. The two men stood up to greet them.

"These are the two Jedi I was telling you about," Ertie said, and he gestured to the Jedi one at a time. "This is Jedi Master Keeda Reltu."

"Jedi Knight, but just Keeda will suffice," Keeda ammended.

"And this is her apprentice Ziro," Ertie said. He then lifted a hand towards his cousins. "And these are my cousins, Markov and Dendar."

"It's a pleasure, Miss Jedi. Ertie here won't shut up about you two," said Dendar. He was lanky and had a skinny face and big ears and a wide mouth. He had a childish look to him.

"We're very sorry for the awful circumstances you're in. We hope we can earn your trust, but we know it's risky just to trust a mouse droid these days," Markov said. Markov had a barrel-shaped chest, thick and wide. He also had a black and white peppered mustache.

"I appreciate your willingness to help us in our time of need," Keeda said, placing a hand on Ziro.

"If you'll let us, we'd love to help however we can," Dendar said.

"Come, everyone sit," Ertie said waving everyone down to their chairs, and he heartily grabbed a chair and plopped into it. Everyone sat down. Dendar spoke first.

"I know it's tentative, but if you were to leave with us back to Dantooine, you could stay with us. There are still clones there, but it's not anywhere near as bad as it is here," he said.

Keeda considered. "And what about other places. Could you take us other places besides Dantooine?"

Markov and Dendar looked at each other.

"What place do you have in mind?" Markov said.

"Budestia," Keeda said. There was silence, and she added: "You do know Budestia, don't you?"

"Of course," Markov said.

"Can you take us there?"

"That's the trick. It's a bit of a detour away from Dantooine," Dendar said.

"A detour is an understatement. It's far out of the way, in the Mid Rim," Markov said.

"Why Budestia anyway?" Ertie asked.

"It isn't controlled by the Empire. Had a strong enough military to stay neutral to the end of the Clone Wars, and it's wealthy and isolated. Rumor is that is has become a safe haven for Jedi," Markov said.

"It's true. I've received several encrypted messages from Jedi saying that Budestia is a safe place," Keeda said.

"But haven't you ever considered the rumors to be a trick?" Markov said.

"I've considered it, but it can't be a trick if the Empire doesn't control the planet."

"That's what makes it a trick," Markov added dryly.

"I can sense it. All the Jedi who survived Order Sixty Six are there."

"And even if the rumors are true and the Jedi are hunky-dory holding hands and singing in front of the sunset together, that doesn't change the fact that Budestia is way out of the way for us," Markov said.

"Maybe you and me could talk it over?" Dendar murmured to Markov.

Markov relented. "Give us a moment to discuss it, Miss Jedi."

"Of course."

And while the men discussed, Keeda did her own pondering as well. Perhaps it would be better to in the end stay with Ertie. She and Ziro could easily remain in the shed and never be caught, by unsuspecting wife or otherwise. But she would eventually run out of credits, and not just that but also Jedi relics to sell to black market buyers like Menzel, and then they wouldn't be able to pay Ertie the rent and would have to leave his shed. She trusted Ertie and his place was safe, but she couldn't stay forever. This escape with his cousins might be her and Ziro's only chance at finally leaving Coruscant and reaching the Jedi haven Budestia, light years away from the eyes of the Empire.

Markov and Dendar finished discussing.

"We can take you to Budestia, but we can't do it for free," Markov said.

"How much?"

"Eight thousand."

"I don't have that kind of credits."

"Well how much do you have?"

"Three, maybe three and a half."

Markov shook his head. "I'm sorry. It has to be eight thousand."

"What if I pay you the three thousand now, and my Jedi friends pay you the remaining five thousand when we get there?"

"No deal. I'm still not convinced that there will even be any Jedi when we get there."

"They're there. I told you, I can feel it."

"Sorry, but it has to be eight now, or you stay here with Ertie," Markov said.

"Wait, I might have something."

Keeda left for the shed and came back holding the blue holocron.

"What is it?" said Markov.

"If you sold it to the Empire, at least fifteen thousand. I'd have sold it to them myself but can't for obvious reasons."

"But what is it?"

"A Jedi holocron. It holds ancient Jedi knowledge. They're exceedingly rare, and the Emperor wants as many has he can get his hands on. This, plus the three thousand credits, should cover the flight."

Markov and Dendar glanced at each other and exchanged faces.

"It's a deal," Markov said, and he and Dendar both stood up and shook hands with Keeda.

"Meet us at the spaceport tonight. Docking bay B Forty Four."

And the two cousins were gone.

"This will be good. No more hiding," Ertie said, and he checked his watch. "The wife will be here soon. You two better head back to the shed. I'll come get you when it's time to go."

The two Jedi returned to the shed, and they began to organize their belongings, which was hardly anything save a handful of Jedi relics and a few spare changes of clothes. Keeda thought about leaving the relics with Ertie, but she decided against it, just in case she might ever need to pawn them for more credits. She wanted to be prepared for the worst scenario.

It was almost sunset when Keeda asked Ziro: "What do you think?"

"About going to Budestia?"

"Yes, and about Ertie's cousins?"

"I think we're better off staying here," Ziro said plainly.

"Why's that?"

"I know we'll be safe here. I don't know what happens if we leave."

"Do you not trust Ertie's cousins?"

"Ertie trusts them, and that's something. But no, to be honest I don't."

"Why not? Do you sense something off about them?"

"No. I just don't trust them."

"Well I suppose that's something too."

Keeda thought about it for some time, and before she realized it Ertie was opening the shed door. The sky was dark behind him.

"Hello, friends. Are you ready to go? It's time," he whispered.

"Ertie, there's been a change of plans. Would you be willing to let Ziro stay here?" Keeda said.

"Of course. Sure, it's no problem. But why? Is it his safety? Because you shouldn't need to worry. I'll be personally escorting you myself to the spaceport to make sure no funny business happens."

"I understand, but I think he should stay here for now. When I get to Budestia," and here she turned to Ziro, "I'll have access to credits to pay them to make a second trip and pick you up. I'll use my holoprojector to contact you and tell you that I've arrived safely. If I don't contact you, you know it isn't safe to trust them."

"Yes, master," Ziro said, and he was sad and solemn.

"This is silly. You can trust my cousins. They're my family, and I know them," Ertie said, a little angry and a little hurt.

"I know, and I'm sorry, Ertie. But I can't risk Ziro's life."

And so the two Jedi parted ways, Keeda with Ertie, and Ziro remaining alone in the shed. They both cried when they said goodbye. And then Ertie led Keeda to the spaceport without any problems. And all the way there not a single star blinked in the sky. Coruscant had no stars.

And when they reached the spaceport, the place was only a little busy, with starships docked in half the hangars, the other half empty, and pilots and passengers loitered around or roamed here and there idly. And eventually Ertie spotted his cousins waiting in front of a small cargo freighter. The ship was crude and bulky, built purely for function with no regards to aesthetics. Everyone acted casual. Keeda handed Markov and Dendar the credits.

"Where's the little one?" Markov asked.

"He couldn't come after all," she said.

She then boarded the ship. Ertie waved goodbye to her, and she waved back and was gone.

"Take good care of her. She is a good friend," Ertie said to his cousins.

The cousins said nothing and did not look at him. Suddenly a squad of clones appeared bursting into the spaceport. They had red accents on their armor and carried EM-11 rifles. In the lead was a clone in completely red armor. They approached hangar B44. Ertie observed helpless and in shock.

"Which of you are the Salori brothers?" asked the clone in red.

"We are," said Markov gesturing to Dendar and himself.

"And the Jedi?"

"In the ship. But only one showed up."

The clone in red flicked two fingers at the ship and reached for his pistols. He silently approached the ship, and the other clones followed. They moved quickly onboard. Ertie heard the snap and hiss of a light saber, then blaster shots. Suddenly it was deathly quiet. The clones dragged Keeda Reltu by her feet off the ship. Black scorch marks splotched her body. She was dead. The clone in red was the last to leave the ship.

He approached Dendar and Markov.

"And where's the other Jedi? You promised two," he said.

"I told you. He didn't show," Markov said.

"I can see that. Where is he?"

"Ask our cousin."

The red clone turned to Ertie.

Ertie stammered, but finally managed to say: "But I don't know about any Jedi."

"Don't lie. Your cousins here just made a lot of credits. If you cooperate, I'll reward you with some too. If you don't, I'll make sure you're imprisoned for hiding enemies of the Empire," the clone said.

"Okay, okay, he's in my shed at my house." Ertie's eyes were wide. He was terrified of the clones, yet he was also disgusted with himself at how quickly he had relented.

"Take me there," said the red clone.

"Wait!" said Markov.

He had the red clone's attention. He pulled out the blue holocron.

"Would this be of any interest to you?" he said, smirking haughtily.

"Why would I want that?" the clone said.

"It's a holocron. It holds ancient Jedi knowledge. It-"

"I know what it is."

"Then you know how valuable it is. The Jedi told us herself!"

"She lied. The thing's worthless."

"That lying bitch! It was all a bluff," Dendar said, looking at Markov.

The clone returned his attention back to Ertie. "Let's go, little man," he said.

Ertie then took the clone along with the rest of the Imperial Police to his house, and they entered the backyard through the side gate. And when they checked the shed, there was no one inside.

"Is this a joke?" the red clone said.

"No! He was here! I swear."

"Funny. I don't see him."

"He's a smart kid. He must have known something bad would happen. He must have left."

"So how do we find him?"

Ertie made a squeamish face, like he was going to vomit. "I don't know."

"I wasn't sure if you knew, but now I know you do and that you're lying."

"No I'm not! Sir-"

"Lie to me one more time, and you go to prison. How do I find him?"

Ertie looked down at his shoes. He spoke weakly. "He's waiting for a holomessage from his master. If she tells him she's safe on Budestia, he'll trust my cousins and meet them at the spaceport."

"Good boy. You just won yourself a lot of credits."

"But what I said doesn't help you. The Jedi's dead. You can't threaten her to make a false message to him, even if you wanted."

"Let us worry about that. Meanwhile, you go and check your bank account. It has a few more zeroes in there."

The clone left with the rest of the Imperial Police.

As he walked he spoke into his comlink. "I want a PROXY droid up and running, asap. I want it to duplicate Jay One Oh Three Three, ay kay ay Keeda Reltu. And make sure you have the Jedi's holoprojector with you. It should still be on the body."

Meanwhile Ertie stood alone in his backyard with the shed door still swung open. His wife opened the door to the backyard. "Ertorius Salori. Get back inside the house right now. You'll catch a cold," she yelled to him from across the yard.

Ertie closed the shed door and went back inside the house.


	7. The Tale of Meezz

_"The Republic had the Wookies. The Separatists had the Geonosians. And the Empire has the Kubaz."_

-Pollux Hax, "On the Implementation of Non-human Alien Races in Galactic-scale Military Strategy and Organization"

The Tale of Meezz, or the Spy's Tale

A fog hung over Coruscant's tallest skyscrapers and filled the streets and alleys with a damp, white darkness. Air speeders zipped over the city like buzzardflies over a rotted carcass, and aliens chirped and clicked and hummed in the cacophony of a thousand languages, and all was as it had been before the Clone Wars, except now clones in white armor patrolled everywhere, like hive workers guarding their queen inside some dark hill, and the clones had no number but were as many as the sands on the seashores of Naboo or the leaves in the trees of Kashyyyk's forests. The clones were drone-like, unthinking and merciless, and they scared even Meezz.

Meezz, or "bug" as the clones called her, was a spy for the Empire. She was a Kubaz, one of the insect people from the planet Olmecoid. The planet was deep in Wild Space, in the uncharted regions of the galaxy beyond the Outer Rim. It was a jungle world with palm-lush, tropical shores, crystal blue oceans, and swollen and angry brown rivers, and the planet was particularly unique for its mud rock spires. The Kubaz had built the spires so long ago that they had forgotten how to build them, and the Kubaz elders and wise men called them mountains and claimed that their gods had built them eons ago. And the Kubaz lived inside the spires, in labyrinthine tunnels dug into them, and the Kubaz rarely saw sunlight, for they preferred the darkness beneath the earth.

The Kubaz were a primitive race. They were shelled in a black carapace for skin, and they had honey-combed eyes, and they had no nose, but otherwise they were very human in appearance. They had formerly lived under the cruel subjugation of the Black Sun Cartel. For a hundred years, the cartel had been plundering the land for a spice unique to Olmecoid, and the spice formed in great deposits buried deep beneath the mud rock spires. The cartel enslaved the Kubaz and forced them to mine their own spires for the priceless spice, and there were cave-ins, and spires collapsed from the mining and killed many. Then one day, by mere happenstance, a Star Destroyer arrived on the planet on a mapping mission, and at the sight of the Imperial vessel the cartel fled and never returned. The entire Kubaz race swore allegiance to the Empire after that, and they have ever since served as Imperial spies across the galaxy.

The Kubaz immediately and completely replaced the clones as spies, and the Kubaz spy network became the greatest there had ever been in the galaxy, and there would not likely be one so effective again. The Kubaz made for great spies because their senses of sight and sound were so keen, and because they were skilled trackers and adept at remaining unseen. But what made them most valuable was their insect mind: what one saw all could see, and what one heard all could hear. In this way their minds were woven into a single web of thought, and they were always watching, like one great Eye, and all citizens of the Empire feared them. The Kubaz were loyal to the Empire and to it only, and they served the Emperor well.

And so Meezz, in communion with the singular Kubaz Mind, was on Coruscant, the City of Spires where Jedi hid and clone soldiers marched. The planet had changed in so short a time with the end of the Republic, and to Meezz it was a dark world, as if the skyscrapers and air speeders and starships like a metal dome blotted out the blue of the sky, and all was metal and sterile and gray. The planet was like the shadowy insides of a hive, and it swarmed with armed soldiers, and the eyes of the Empire were everywhere for the Kubaz watched all.

The fog was dense and formed droplets on glass windows that pooled and fell from their own weight, and the fog brushed in wisps against walls and people and aliens like a cold, wet rat. Meezz sat in an HCVw A9 tank, giant and ash-colored, that rolled down the streets of the city, and the tank groaned and hissed through the fog and past the crowds walking along the sidewalks. Meezz carried a concealed K-119 blaster pistol, the standard for Imperial spies, at the small of her back, and with her was an escort of clone troopers. She was seeking a high priority subject, a human male named Dak Pandros. Mister Pandros was handsome and broad-shouldered, with a quiet countenance and observant eyes the color of freshly brewed caffa. His family line had lived on Coruscant for nearly a thousand years, since the earliest days of the Republic, and he was a photographer for a major news outlet, and he had a wife and three daughters. He was a hard worker, mostly isolated though he had many acquaintances and several close friends and was generally well-liked and universally respected. He had little taste for politics and rarely spoke of it, but when approached on the subject, he openly supported Emperor Palpatine and the new government.

But Dak Pandros was a suspect. There had been a Jedi sighting in his neighborhood, and the Pandros family home was the only house left uninspected. The spy network had tapped into Dak Pandros' comlink and listened to his conversations, observed him both at work and abroad in the city, and even spied on his wife and children, and yet they found no evidence of him housing Jedi in secret. Meezz was assigned to complete the investigation by whatever means she deemed necessary and appropriate, and so she opted for a more conspicuous method and to speak with him in person, and so she and the clones drove through the fog that enveloped Coruscant and to his home.

She was now in the suburban parts of the city, where buildings didn't rise so high and pierce the atmosphere like needle-shaped mountains but were shorter and more block-shaped. Family land speeders blipped passed them out of the fog and disappearing back into it again. No children were anywhere, playing or otherwise, and the neighborhood was deathly quiet and still. The suburbs stretched on endlessly in row after row of squat building complexes that were perfectly symmetrical and perfectly the same, and with the fog a person couldn't see more than a dozen buildings down at a time. The place felt like an eerie maze. Soon the tank lurched to a slow stop, and the large doors opened, and Meezz and the clones exited the tank. Meezz moved with the clones following closely behind her, and when he reached the Pandros family home, she lingered back and watched and waited.

After a long pause, she approached the house and front door. She stood noiseless on the doorstep like a malignant apparition, or like some ominous messenger carrying an evil news. The clones stood a little ways behind her with their rifles in arm. Beside the door was a clunky metal keypad used to unlock the door. Meezz could request the password from Imperial databanks, for the Empire held such information ready for retrieval at her command, but she decided to knock instead. She rapped the door with a firmly clenched hand and waited, and there was a long pause, and the door slid open and there in front of her stood Dak Pandros. He was quiet at the sight of her, and his eyes briefly flicked at the clones, and he showed a subtle sign of anxiousness.

Meezz spoke calmy. "Hello, sir. Is this the property of Dak Pandros?"

"I'm Dak," he said in a steady, earthy voice, and glancing again at the clones he added, "May I help you?"

"I only need to ask you a few questions, Mister Pandros. May I come in?"

Dak Pandros gestured for her to enter.

Meezz turned back to the clones and spoke to them in Kubazian: "Wait here. I am to be left alone until I summon you." She then faced Pandros. "The troopers will stay outside," she said to him in Basic, and she entered his home.

The home was very simply and clean. The rooms were round with domed ceilings, and the walls were metal and painted a soft steel blue and accented with silver and brass beams, and the floor was metal with blue carpet. The furniture was sleek and of various assortments of glass and metal, and the couches were tan with crisp white pillows. Dak Pandros led Meezz into the dining room. The dinner table was long and narrow, and on it was a bowl filled with variously colored fruits. There were many windows in the house and in the room, and outside them was nothing but a white glow devoid of a single shape or color.

Pandros stood behind one of the chairs and placed his hands on the back rest. He gestured to one of the other chairs. "Please, have a seat," he said.

Meezz eased herself into one of the chairs. "Some fog," she commented, gazing out one of the windows. Pandros looked out the same window briefly.

"Yeah, some fog," he said. "Would you like something to drink? I have wine, water, caffa."

"What vintage is the wine, if I might ask?"

"It's a 2 BE, I think. It's a Camparino Exxus, imported from vineyards on Alderaan."

"I'll have that."

Pandros nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, and in a moment he was back holding two empty glasses and a bottle of red wine. He placed the two glasses on the table, and there was the sound of glass hitting a hard surface, and he opened the wine bottle and poured the wine into the glasses, and the wine swirled in the glass. Meezz grabbed her glass and raised it.

"Thank you. What should we drink to?"

Pandros lowered himself into his chair, the same one he had stood behind and placed his hands on earlier. "To the Emperor's health," he said, joining her by raising his glass also.

"Very well. To the Emperor's health," said Meezz, and they both took a sip. Meezz continued: "So Mister Pandros, you have a wife and three daughters, correct?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"And am I safe in assuming your wife is at work and your daughters are still at school?"

Pandros took another sip of wine. "Yes, ma'am."

"Mister Pandros, I must confess, I've read your file and am very familiar with you and your family. But I don't know if you're familiar with who I am. Do you know who I am or why I am here?"

"I know you work for the government, and I know you're here to ask questions."

"Is that all you know? You work for a news outlet. Surely you've already deduced why I'm here specifically."

"I think you're here on Jedi hunting business."

"That's right. You've guessed it."

"I mean no disrespect, but I don't know why you're here. Clones were in my home nine months ago looking for Jedi and found nothing."

"I'm aware of that. I read the report on this subdivision. But we feel a slight duplication of efforts in necessary, even if it ends mostly in wasted time and resources. That said, I have a few questions for you, Mister Pandros. It won't take long, and if you cooperate fully, I can close the file on your family," Meezz said. She sipped from her glass, studying Pandros. Pandros held his glass and rubbed the rim of it with his thumb. Meezz swallowed and continued: "So are you aware a Jedi sighting was recently reported from this subdivision?"

"Yes."

"What have you heard about the Jedi sighting?"

"Only rumors-"

"Tell me the rumors."

"But they are only rumors."

"I'm here to gather information, and rumors are just as useful as facts. Even the false ones can be revealing. Especially the false ones. So what have you heard?"

"Well, I think I heard a Jedi was spotted a few nights ago. It was a Jedi because he or she was constantly looking backwards and acting suspicious, and when clones came patrolling by, the Jedi ran and hid under a land speeder until the clones passed. Or maybe it was inside the land speeder. I don't remember. -Again, it's just a rumor."

"So theoretically, and assuming the rumor is true, the Jedi is still hiding somewhere in the neighborhood?"

"I suppose so, yes."

Are there any families you would suspect of hiding a Jedi? Any with Jedi-leaning sympathies?"

"No. None that I can think of."

"Are you sure? It's okay to speak up. Everything you say is off the record and completely confidential, and you won't be punished for any truths you tell me."

Pandros took this in, considered it. "I do not feel comfortable speaking out against a neighbor," he finally said.

"If there is a Jedi here, everyone is in danger. This includes you and your family. This is a matter of Imperial security, and I need your cooperation as much as possible."

"But what will happen to the family if they actually are hiding a Jedi?"

"If they cooperate, nothing. The Empire takes care of her citizens."

Pandros stared down at the wine in his cup. "The Gredges," he said. "The Gredge children have always spoken fondly of the fallen Jedi Order, and I suspect they have taken that from their parents. But the family is on Corellia for a business trip, if I remember correctly."

"So is it possible they smuggled the Jedi off-world?"

"I don't know."

"How close are you to the Gredges?"

"My daughters play with their daughter and son. But other than that, I don't speak with them very often. I wouldn't say we're close. We've been to each other's houses a few times, but that's it really."

Meezz listened attentively. When Pandros finished, she considered his words, then accepted them.

"I will have to reexamine their file. And did you hear a physical description of the Jedi?"

"I heard the Jedi was a Rodian."

"What about height? Clothes?"

"He was wearing typical citizen robes, but they were old and worn. The Jedi had been living in terrible conditions, clearly. I never heard how tall he was."

Meezz swallowed the last of her wine from her glass. "Well I guess that should do it. Thank you very much for your hospitality, and for the drink."

Pandros nodded coolly. "You're welcome, he said, and he casually swirled the wine in his glass.

"But before I go," said Meezz, "I have one last question for you, Mister Pandros."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You know whom I work for and why I am here, but do you know who I am?"

"That is none of my business."

"But are you aware of who I am?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And with whom are you currently speaking?"

"An Imperial spy."

"Very good! I know it's counterintuitive, a spy announcing she's a spy, but these are different times. It wasn't all that long ago when the entire galaxy was at war, when spies relied on disguises and acting and lies to obtain information. Now spies watch in the open, and we interrogate and investigate without secrecy. There's no need to be secretive when you work for the only military power in the galaxy." Meezz reached for the bottle of wine. "May I have myself another glass?" she asked.

"Yes," Pandros said.

"Wonderful." Meezz poured herself a second glass of wine and continued: "I'm a Kubaz, and what makes a Kubaz so effective at hunting Jedi, as opposed to clones for example, are - well there are many reasons. But one of the reasons is that we can think like a Jedi, while clones can only think like soldiers, and even then they think more like droids than men of flesh and blood. This is a fair assessment, don't you agree?"

"I suppose so."

"The clones are a lot like hive-minded Hrelan bees. They are organized, deadly, and never stop working. These attributes the clones share with the insect world. As for, say, the politicians in the Imperial Senate, they are a lot like mosquitoes. They provide nothing useful for the ecosystem, and no matter how many you kill they keep coming. They buzz in your ear ceaselessly and they make their living by feasting on other living things. But, if we were to compare the Jedi to a member of the insect kingdom, it would be the womproach. I'm sure most would consider this a demeaning insult, but I don't. Consider the world that the womproach lives in. It's a hostile world. If a roach were to scurry across your dining room floor right now, wouldn't you try to kill it?"

"Sure."

"Has a roach ever done harm to you, or done anything to you deserving of death?"

"Roaches are pests, they spread disease-"

"Has a roach ever caused you to be sick a day in your life? Stray Loth-cats carry all sorts of diseases, but people still pet them. But who's ever touched a roach, except with the heel of their boot?"

"Roaches are nasty."

"But roaches are harmless. Meanwhile cats bite and scratch and are of a generally more vicious disposition. And yet people want to hold the cat and kill the roach."

"I don't care for cats."

"Neither do I. But if a stray cat stood on your front porch, would you feel an urge to chase it away?"

"Probably not."

"I don't think so. But you'd still try to kill the roach. You don't like roaches. You don't know why you don't like them. You just find them repulsive." Meezz let the metaphor settle and then continued her line of thought. "The womproach must endure a truly hostile world. And yet the roach doesn't just survive. It thrives. The reason for this is because the roach has the ability to hide in the filthiest, most unreachable places, and because they don't die easily but have the stubborn resilience of a tree still standing after a hurricane. And that, Mister Pandros, is what the Jedi have in common with a womproach.

"So when clones inspect a home, they inspect everywhere they would think to hide. They check the attic, the basement, the closets, under the beds. But there are many placesit would never occur to a clone to hide. This is why I am here. Because I'm tremendously aware of the feats people are capable of once they abandon dignity," said Meezz. She took a decent swig of wine and suddenly changed her tone. "I really must find myself this brand of wine. Camparino Essux. It's fantastic."

Pandros's cool and collected facade was little by little eroding.

"You can have the bottle, if you'd like," he said. "We never drink it."

Meezz smiled. "I think I will. Thank you very much. Now back to our conversation. I was explaining how the clones are inadequate. So not only do the clones fail at inspecting houses fully, but they mistreat the citizens who give Jedi shelter. These citizens, whether human or alien, are not enemies of the Empire. They do not wish us to return to the brutal times of the Clone Wars. They are simply confused and misled by the lies of the Jedi. These citizens do not need punishing. They simply need to be reminded of the benefits of the Empire and the threat that the Jedi pose.

"Let's use you as an example, Mister Pandros. We are currently in peace time. You have a beautiful wife, three lovely daughters, a good job and a good home, and all the while this Jedi conflict has nothing to do with you. Yet here you are having a discussion with an Imperial personnel, and clones are standing at your doorstep. So, Mister Pandros, let me ask you this: what is your number one obligation? Is it to stand up against the Empire out of some moral principle or philosophical obligation? Or, is it to fight the Empire to your last breath, join a rebellion? Or, is it to help criminals in their desperate hour of need? Or, in this age of Imperial peace, is it to protect the four beautiful women in your family?" Meezz stopped and let that last statement stand. She finally added: "That was a question, Mister Pandros. What is your number one duty?"

"To protect my family."

"Now my job dictates that I must have the clones enter your home and conduct a thorough search before I can officially cross your family's name off my list. And if there is so much as a thumbprint or hair follicle belonging to a Jedi, I can assure you we'll find it. That is, unless you have something to tell me that will make conducting a search unnecessary.

"I should also add that any information that makes my job easier will not be met with punishment. Actually, it will be met with reward. And that reward will be that your family will be left alone."

Meezz sipped from her glass and casually observed Pandros, who just sat there staring back at her.

"You are sheltering an enemy of the Empire, are you not?"

"Yes."

"And there's a blaster pistol strapped under the table where you're sitting."

"Yes."

"And you're debating on using it to protect the Jedi."

"Yes."

"You must be very close to the Jedi."

"I am."

"Tell me where the Jedi is, or I'll kill you first, then the Jedi, then have the rest of your family arrested for being associated with not just one but two criminals of the Empire."

Pandros stared Meezz in the eyes unmoving, and his jaw was clenched.

"Most often," said Meezz, "Jedi hide behind false walls, under floors and above ceilings. I've seen every trick in the book. The Jedi is already a dead man, or a dead woman if that's what she turns out to be. There's no sense in causing the ruination of your family also."

"I can't do that. Not to her."

"Oh, so it's a woman. Maybe your wife doesn't know about her after all."

"Leave now, or I'll blow you to the event horizon of a black hole."

"There are clones waiting outside. You don't stand a chance."

Pandros reached for the blaster pistol under the table. Meezz instinctively reached for her own and aimed and fired at Pandros, and Pandros's pistol was almost poised at her when she shot him, and his chest and back erupted into flames. He plopped dead on the table, and the fire around his torso crackled. Meezz admired his courage.

She summoned the clones inside, and they tore the house apart, and sure enough a Jedi was hiding under the floor, beneath a concealed hatch under the blue carpet. The Jedi was a little Rodian girl. She was crying. The clones apprehended her and held her by the arms, and she used the Force to retrieve her lightsaber, and she activated it. The blade burned blue and hummed like a swarming hive, and when she swung it the blade buzzed, and she fought the clones and died quickly. The clones dragged her body out of the house and loaded it onto the tank. The clones retrieved Pandros's body next.

"Make sure a PROXY droid is here before the family returns," Meezz said to one of the clones.

"Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am."

PROXY droids were holodroids developed by the Empire. The droids used holographic technology to assume the appearance of any individual, in this case Dak Pandros. A PROXY droid was dispatched to the house, and whenever the family saw the droid, they thought it was truly their father at home, and they never learned what happened to the real man. "Clones came and wrecked the place, took the Jedi, but I'm okay," the droid said. In this way the Empire covered its vile act.

Meanwhile Meezz was back in the tank riding through the dense fog, and two corpses were at her feet, and a bottle of wine was in her hand. It was several weeks before Missis Pandros noticed it was missing.


	8. The Tale of Sly Moore

_"The Emperor's White Shadow is to be feared. With one look into her eyes, she will enter your mind like a spore and grow like mold, rotting the mind from within. No one has ever recovered from the brain damage she inflicts."_

-Pollux Hax, "An Anthropological Study of the Umbarans: An Analysis of Their Practical Use and Ethics in Biologically Endemic Telekinetic Power"

The Tale of Sly Moore, or the Secretary's Tale

Senator Garro was a Toydarian, of the green variety, and he was one of the richest beings alive. He was the son of the founder of Interstellar Heavy Industries Corp., and he had inherited a fortune and even purchased his own private star cruiser along with mansions on five different luxury planets. He had won his election into the Republic - now Imperial - Senate by the sheer amount of credits he poured into his campaign. And he had even rented out the entire Rosemary Rancor for his birthday, and had hired the most expensive juze band in the galaxy to perform that night. It is little exaggeration that when his father died, Garro inherited the galaxy. And now the senator walked surrounded by five clone troopers, for he was being escorted to Emperor Palpatine's office. The clones were members of the Imperial Police.

The senator was quiet. He wasn't cuffed, but the clones kept him moving at a steady pace, and he wasn't free to do anything else except continue moving at that pace. Being a senator granted him many privileges in life, as did being as absurdly wealthy as he was, and yet the clones cared nothing for his profession or his wealth. And so he flapped his wings and hovered over the ornate tiled floor of the Imperial Executive Building, keeping in steady line with the clones.

There was no way to describe the Imperial Executive Building as anything other than mythological. It had been remodeled since the Republic had become the Empire. Endless halls stretched and joined and branched throughout the building like a labyrinth, and they were lined with marble walls and mosaic floors and rows of pillars and stained glass windows. But what was most noticeable was the statues. The halls were filled with statues of red marble, and Garro recognized some of the statues as depictions of leaders of the Empire. He saw the stern hollowed face of Grand Moff Tarkin, the cold and calculating face of Admiral Thrawn, and the charismatic suave face of Director Orson Krennic. He even saw a statue of a clone holding his helmet at his side, and he decided it must be CC-2224, known throughout the far reaches of the Empire as Commander Cody, since he didn't know which other clone it could be.

Finally he and the five clones reached a pair of reddish wooden doors, and on them were engravings of Krayt dragons. The doors opened by themselves, and there inside the Emperor sat waiting. Just behind him stood a woman, bald and deathly pale, and she wore a ghastly white robe. Garro had seen her many times in the Senate Arena, and he had heard some senators speak of her. The Emperor's White Shadow, they called her. The woman's name was Sly Moore, and not once had anyone heard her utter a single word since she began accompanying the Emperor. She was supposedly the Emperor's secretary, though no one knew what her tasks as secretary exactly were, save that she follow the Emperor wherever he go. And she never left his side, not once, forever an ominous and silent presence lingering behind him, and she smelled faintly of bones and fog.

"Good to see you, Senator Garro," the Emperor said.

The five clones exited the room, and the two wooden doors closed behind them as they left, leaving Garro alone with the Emperor and his secretary.

The Emperor's office was an eerie contrast from the palatial hallways outside. The floor was red velvety carpet, and the walls and ceiling were all plain durasteel, muted and pallid like a Star Destroyer hull. And a great window stretched behind the Emperor, and through it Garro could see the towers of Coruscant and the air speeders weaving between them. The window had metal blinds, but the blinds were open to let light into the office.

Garro fluttered towards the Emperor's desk, and the flapping of his wings made a papery flicker.

"What is the meaning of this, Palpatine?" Garro said. "Arrested by the Imperial Police? I'm a senator!"

"You weren't arrested, Garro. It was just an escort, for your safety."

"Don't play coy."

"I'm sorry if the clones inconvenienced you. I assure you, they were just doing their job."

"My problem isn't with the clones. It's with you. Why did you bring me here? You know I'm a very busy man."

The Emperor was expressionless, and there was yellow malice in his eyes.

"Now you're being coy," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"I know you are sympathetic to the Jedi, Toydarian. And I know you are hiding some of them." The Emperor's voice was dry like cracked bones in the deserts of Tatooine.

"I don't know who told you that, but they lied to you," said the senator.

"Is that right?"

"I swear."

"Of course you do."

"Check my house if you want. Check all of them. Check my ships, my star cruiser, my office, anywhere you want. You won't find any Jedi hiding. That's absurd."

"Listen, Toydarian, your race is nothing but sleezy merchants and conmen, and I'm well aware of the propensity for lies that is so endemic to all of you. If you don't tell me where you are keeping your Jedi right now, I will force the information out of you."

"You can't do that. I'm a member of the Imperial Senate."

"And I'm your god and king. This is my galaxy, and in it you have no rights without my say."

"But I'm innocent. This is ridiculous. Absurd. And I don't understand why you think I'm housing Jedi."

"And I don't understand why you are wasting my time," the Emperor said. He glanced down at his desk and drummed his fingers on it. Sly Moore stood there watching and hadn't moved. The Emperor continued: "The Jedi are not your friends, despite what they lead you to believe. They'll betray you when they're done with you. That is their way. The Jedi always betray one another, like how Obi-Wan Kenobi betrayed his apprentice Anakin Skywalker, and how Mace Windu betrayed me. And now I am disfigured forever. Don't make the same mistake I did and put your trust blindly in the hands of those monsters."

"Emperor Palpatine, if I had ever seen a Jedi, I would have reported it to the Imperial Police. If I ever do see a Jedi, I will report it. But I'm not hiding any of them. Have that black Jedi of yours read my mind with his dark magic if you want. If that's what it takes to prove it to you that I'm innocent, I'll let him do it."

"Do you take me for a fool? For one of your insipid senator friends? I know no one can read the mind of a Toydarian with the Force, Jedi or otherwise."

Garro flinched.

"No, Darth Vader will not read your mind," said the Emperor. "She will."

Garro looked at Sly Moore. "Her?"

"She's an Umbaran. The Umbarans have this nasty way of probing the mind for information and extracting it. And she doesn't need the Force to do it."

Sly Moore was staring intensely at the senator now. The irises of her eyes were white, and the pupils black like the void of space. Garro felt uncomfortable and dropped his gaze from her down to the floor. Meanwhile the Emperor slowly stood out of his chair and walked around from behind the desk.

"I will leave her here with you," the Emperor began. "I have some business to attend to. When I return, you will have already given her the knowledge that I seek."

The Emperor left the room. It was just Garro and the pale woman now. She stared at him unblinkingly, and her face had no expression.

Suddenly the metal blinds in front of the window closed, and not a shred of light seeped through. The ceiling lights shut off, and then a red light flickered on, making a faint clicking and then an electric humming sound. The entire room was cast in a murky red glow. Garro watched Sly Moore with an obvious anxiety, and he felt sweat beading on his forehead and dripping down his back beneath his shirt. And Sly Moore began to walk around the desk like some slow-moving phantom. Garro realized he couldn't move or look away, and that his eyes were transfixed in the woman's gaze. He tried to scream for help, but his body was paralyzed, not out of fear but as if something was controlling his body and physically preventing him from doing so. And she stopped and stood in front of him, inches from his face, and Garro felt a pain he had never before experienced nor knew could exist. He felt like she had cut into his brain with a molten hot scalpel and was dissecting it. He wanted to scream but couldn't. And it felt as if all his memories had been neatly sorted in filing cabinets, and now Sly Moore dumped them on the floor and examined them at random, picking them up one at a time and tossing them aside. His brain felt like it was charring in fire or sizzling in acid, and his thoughts melted from coherence into sludge, and he quickly lost his sense of articulation and cognition and only felt excruciating pain as his intelligence gradually receded.

And Sly Moore finally found what she needed. She left the senator's brain alone, and he fell onto the floor like a womp rat paralyzed with snake venom. Garro was alive, but he didn't know he was alive or even that he was. He was a drooling mindless thing, and his mind and memories would stay slush forever. And Sly Moore walked back to the desk and waited patiently behind it for the return of her master. The blinds remained closed, and the lights red.

And so Senator Garro had been one of the richest beings in the Empire, but no more. And his three children inherited his wealth, and though it took ten long years to squander that astronomic fortune, they finally did squander it. And they spent the rest of their lives in debt, and they passed that debt on to their children, and they to theirs. And Garro himself was forgotten.


	9. The Tale of Juno Eclipse

_"In the later years of the Empire, Vader raised a thirteenth Starkiller. But many forget that the Starkiller had a pilot, and that she was the most decorated in the Imperial Navy."_

-Pollux Hax, "Facts, Misnomers, and Secrets about the Thirteenth Starkiller"

The Tale of Juno Eclipse, or the Child's Tale

It was the air show. Imperial starfighters streaked through the daytime sky, and they roared and howled and screeched and they glistened like suns. Venator-class Star Destroyers drifted peacefully near the clouds like hot air balloons. And tens of thousands of people looked skyward and smiled and dreamed. Little boys ran and chased each other with toy V-wings, and girls sat contentedly on their mothers' laps while eating ice cream popsicles, and parents held each other's hands, and all felt the noise of starships run through their hair and clothes like wind and stir in them a joy and a thrill, like that of a child surprised with a wrapped gift. And among the tens of thousands of people was a girl named Juno Eclipse.

The air show. Everyone felt excitement as they said it.

Juno sat on her father's shoulders, and she watched the Imperial Dropship Transports fly in formation with clones waving from the opened doors. Her eyes gleamed with wonder, and she said nothing, and she never once cast her eyes downward. She watched the V-wings whirl and loop and form tight formations like acrobatic eagles. She watched the V-20 Maelstrom Interceptors blast beyond the sound barrier and shriek sonic booms and burn the air hot with their rocket fire. She watched the Delta-class T-3c shuttles screech their siren yells as they lugged over the crowds and cast their shadows darkly on them. And that night she watched the WVRN Y-wings drone lowly overhead and launch fireworks into the sky.

"Where are we going, Daddy?" she had asked earlier that morning. "To the air show!" had been his answer.

Juno watched everything from morning to nightfall, but none of it was as impressive as Darth Vader and his Black Fang Squadron. Darth Vader, the legendary overseer of the Imperial military, took the lead in his Eta-2 Actis-class interceptor, painted black, and with him were the ORC-1s. The ORC-1s (Oppressive ReConnaissance-1 starfighters) were modeled after the ARC-170s of the Republic, only these were sleeker and more menacing and solid gray, and the nose of them had been removed all the way up to the pilot's cockpit windshield. The ORC-1s were nicknamed the "sawed-off arcs" and the "stubfighters," and they were the most impressive starfighters in the Imperial Navy. While the ORC-1s were always painted solid gray, the ones in Black Fang Squadron were black. The clone pilots were the crème-de-la-crème from the Imperial pilot academy, unmatched and undaunted, and they were renowned throughout the galaxy, and they and Vader flew right over Juno's head.

Juno was from the planet Corulag, and her father had brought her here to the Imperial capital of Coruscant to see and to explore. Of all the things Juno saw on that trip, from the skyscrapers to the Jedi temple ruins to the Emperor's palace, nothing impressed her so much as the air show. It was that day she decided she wanted to be a pilot. "Someday I'll be in Black Fang Squadron," she said, still perched on her father's shoulders. "Maybe someday you will," her father said smiling, and he bobbed her up and down a little, and she laughed.

A man next to them shook his head. "You really shouldn't feed your kid false hopes. Only clones get to be pilots. Regular humans don't cut it, and women especially." Juno heard what the man said, and her smile faded. Her father eyed the man harshly and said "Keep to your business," and then, "There's no purpose to saying such things to a child." He then returned his attention to his daughter. "Ignore him, Juno." Juno's face became hardened, but not bitter. "I don't care what he says," she said. "I'm going to be a pilot one day, and then I'll fly over our house, and you'll see me waving from inside my starship."

Juno Eclipse and her father stayed until the place emptied and the last Star Destroyer blipped into hyperspace, disappearing into the night sky like a shooting star.


	10. The Tale of Bultar Swan

_"It is no longer a secret that the Jedi had conspired to create the Clone Wars in order to accumulate power. They brought war to a thousand worlds, strong-arming them to join the Republic, and the Jedi razed a thousand more, leaving them shell-shocked wastelands."_

-Pollux Hax, "The Eternal Way of the Jedi"

The Tale of Bultar Swan, or the Second Jedi's Tale

There were four rules for a Jedi to survive on Coruscant.

One. Don't stand out. The Emperor's spies were everywhere, and the clone armies were rampant like hordes of womp rats infesting a mile-deep nest, and even the citizens reported Jedi if they recognized one.

Two. Accept the past. The days of the Republic were gone, never to return, along with the entire Jedi Order. Ten thousand Jedi had been massacred because of Order 66, and now they were gone, like a breeze that briefly caressed your cheek and then gently carried away without a trace or sound. The few Jedi remaining could only hope to survive now, and dwelling on the past changed nothing nor helped anyone.

Three. Trust no one. Not just the Clone Wars but also the Jedi had become extremely unpopular by the war's end, and once the Empire began pumping its anti-Jedi propaganda with factory efficiency, all its citizens across the galaxy learned to hate the Jedi. Sympathizers were rare and scared, and many sympathizers weren't sympathizers at all but liars and in fact loyal to the Empire as much as anyone.

And four. Use everyone. Whatever it took, whatever skills a Jedi had, whatever resources were available, the Jedi needed to use everything at their disposal to survive, whether it be through manipulation, lies, stealing, or garnering someone's sympathy. It was one thing to be good and moral. It was another to be good and moral when being so would cost you your life.

Bultar Swan had followed all these rules and so had survived on Coruscant for years after the fall of the Jedi Order. She had joined many other Jedi and groups of Jedi, and many times she had gotten close to them, and always they were killed or captured with her solely escaping. But these years of active Jedi Purge wouldn't last forever. When the dust settled, when the Empire shifted its focus to other endeavors, if she survived these years of Order 66, she would be a broken woman. She knew that. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually shattered and scarred for the rest of her life. But today she had to survive, and so she didn't allow herself to be broken yet, and she remained driven.

She was flying a stolen air speeder, high above the streets of the city. It was night, and the skyscrapers blazed their artificial lights all around her, and other air speeders screeched and blared and zoomed, and below she couldn't even see the streets. Below was just a single lava-yellow glow, a sea of fiery amber mist, and air speeders rose out of it and sank into it in droves, and black skyscrapers checkered in lights jutted high out of the mist like island crags.

He better be there, and he better have answers, Bultar thought as she sonic boomed through the atmosphere of the planet thousands of stories up.

She eased the accelerator and slowed down a bit, and she maneuvered into one of the skylanes where other air speeders flew in filed lines at an even pace, and the air speeders never ended, stretching on and on in both directions until they faded in the darkness and in the light pollution. And above and under her were countless other skylanes, all moving in different directions. Between the behemoth durasteel and glass towers of Coruscant, the skylanes weaved and formed a grid of hurtling comets. It was as if giant metal spiders had overran the city and dowsed it with webs of traffic.

He better be there, Bultar thought again, and she said the thought aloud.

She was descending now, diving towards the sea of yellow mist below and swerving around the packed skylanes. The further she fell the further the mist seemed to sink away from her, like chasing an ebbing tide. And soon the mist stopped falling and started fading, and soon she could make out the streets faintly from inside the mist, and directly below her was a gaping hole the size of a Star Destroyer. In the hole was nothing but darkness black like the bottom of an ocean trench.

Bultar flew straight into the hole and into the blackness, and that's all there was for several long moments. A black more profound than the depths of space, and then a silence to match it. Bultar kept her hands on the controls, and she heard her own heartbeat in her ears, for there was no other sound to be heard.

There it is, Bultar thought.

Suddenly below her, many kilometers down, were tiny orange lights of a city dotting the darkness below. It was the Undercity. And above Bultar were many crater-sized openings like clouds and each raining down a great beam of white light. But the light died quickly only a half-kilometer down.

Bultar navigated to a docking bay nestled among the Undercity's stone skyscrapers. She had to hurry. After years spent hiding on Coruscant, she had finally acquired transportation to the planet Budestia, the Jedi safe haven uncontrolled by the Empire. Her transportation would leave in a few hours, but she had to do something before she left. She needed to talk to Ziro the Hutt, the crowned prince of Coruscant.

Bultar docked her air speeder and was now walking down the streets of the city, as fast as possible while still appearing casual. By happenstance a patrol of clones made a turn onto her street and were moving in her direction, and they glanced at people's faces as they passed. The streets were busy but not crowded. What was she to do? If she ran, she would be seen and shot. If she kept walking, they would recognize her.

She placed a hand on the blaster pistol at her side. She had long discarded her light saber for a pistol to move through the city more easily unnoticed. But she couldn't use the pistol here, not against a whole patrol.

There was a male Gran standing to the side and holding a cardboard sign with the words _Please Help. Hungry, but will settle for a SMILE. Thanks, and may the Force be with YOU._ The Gran was stoned. An open metal can was at his feet. Bultar approached him and dropped some credits inside the can. She then used the Force and waved her hand and whispered into his ear.

"You want to start a fight with those clones," she suggested.

The Gran dropped his cardboard sign.

He started walking towards the clones, then at them, and he bumped into them.

"Hey, watch it," said a clone.

"You watch it," the Gran said, storming off.

"Come back here," another clone yelled.

"Shove it," the Gran said, waving a hand at them dismissively.

One of the clones stormed up to him, but before the clone could put a hand on him, the Gran spun around and punched him in the gut. The clone reeled back with his arms on his stomach.

The other clones joined up. The Gran had his fists raised up to fight them. The clones raised their rifles and shot him and left him there, and later the aliens of the Undercity walked around his body indifferently. Meanwhile Bultar had long made it passed the clones unnoticed.

She entered a dank alleyway and was soon at the back door of a restaurant. The restaurant was the Rosemary Rancor, and it was a five moon culinary destination famous for its bantha steak and its scalefish imported from Naboo, and it was most famous for its specialty drink, a blue glowing daiquiri called the Imperial Peacekeeper. The owner of the restaurant was Ziro the Hutt. Bultar had determined to take the back way into his restaurant rather than risking the main entrance facing the street.

She entered the kitchen from the back door. It was rush hour and the chefs worked hastily and gave her no notice. They were all droids, and they all lived in the kitchen and never left it.

The kitchen was hot and rang and thrummed with sound. A droid chopped vegetables like a rapid fire blaster, and the stove tops burned and cooked with a loud hiss and simmer while metal spatulas and tongs scraped over them, and yellow and green oils bubbled and boiled in the grease traps, and droids moved fast around each other and occasionally told each other things in deep robotic voices like "Plate moving" and "Move, move!" and "Get out of the way, you bucket of bolts."

A dishwasher softly rumbled in the corner. A droid drizzled sauce on a plate slapped with a with bantha steak and slipped the plate onto the counter under the tickets and hit a small silver bell with his kitchen knife, and the bell gave a sharp ding. A waitress droid rshed in and put the piping hot plate on her tray and rushed back out.

And the thick metal door of the walk-in cooler opened, and there was an icy whoosh and then the sound of icy fans blowing from inside, out came a droid holding a bowl of freshly caught, unpeeled shrimp caked under ice cubes. The reek of the shrimp was strong, and the droid slammed the cooler door shut and hurried the bowl of shrimp off to a cutting board and began peeling and slicing.

Bultar made her way out of the kitchen and passed the swinging metal door and into the dining areas of the restaurant. If the kitchen smelled like raw ingredients and spices, here carried the aromas of refined and seasoned culinary dishes. The place was one of class and luxury, and a calming ambience of juze music played live from a stage. And on the ceiling was a painting of a Star Destroyer, flying over sunlit clouds. The painting was huge and covered the entire ceiling.

She found Ziro the Hutt sitting at a table burgeoned under food, and he was alone. She went straight to him, but suddenly a man stood in front of her and stopped her. He was dressed in a pale sky blue blazer, black pants and shiny black shoes, and a white button-down and pearlish bowtie to match. His hair was combed, and his cologne smelled like a cold and fresh mountain breeze. He smiled a white smile.

"Excuse me, miss. May I help you?"

"I need to speak to Ziro," Bultar said impatiently.

"Sorry, miss. No can do. The boss doesn't want to be disturbed right now. But if you'd like, we can maybe arrange for you to speak with him next week. We're having a wonderful juze band visit next Dipala, and you can come then."

"I'm seeing him now."

"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. If you don't, I'll have to call security."

"Get out of my way."

"Okay, I'm getting security."

Bultar waved a hand slowly. "You will take me to Ziro," she said.

The man chuckled. "Oh, I see. You're a Jedi. Well mind tricks don't work on me, because I'm not stupid. You should know Ziro only hires the best for his private security detail. That includes at least some basic level of intelligence."

Bultar stood and said nothing.

"And now you've revealed your hand, Jedi. And I'm not just going to call security but also the Imperial Police along-"

The man stopped. He suddenly couldn't breathe and gripped his neck. Bultar was choking him with the Force. She relented, and the man collapsed to his knees, gasping and coughing. She walked right past him and up to Ziro.

"Ziro," she said.

Ziro turned his attention from the food and music and studied her.

"Who are you? And where's my security? I told them I don't want to be disturbed," he said in Huttese.

"My name is Bultar Swan. I'm a Jedi Knight of the once great, now fallen Jedi Order. And I must have an audience with you."

The Hutt blinked slowly. "Go ahead. You have my attention."

Bultar respectfully bowed.

"I'm leaving tonight. I'm leaving tonight for Budestia and I'm going to be free, and no one is going to stop me."

The Hutt just sat there blinking.

"But two hours ago I received this message."

Butlar unclipped a thin metal disk from her belt. It was a holoprojector. She held it out in front of her for Ziro to see. There was a coarse static noise, and then a blue hologram flickered to life in the air above the disk. The hologram was no bigger than a hand, and the hologram was of a Jedi Knight. Bultar recognized him as Kento Marek. He had his light saber unsheathed and ignited, and he was running and deflecting blast bolts while holding his holoprojector in his hand. He was tired and breathing fast and hard.

"Not much time left. My wife. Dead. Now just. Me and the boy. Discovered something. Evil and big. Order Six-" and he paused, trying to catch his breath, and then continued. "Order Sixty Seven," he said in one breath. "It's not over. Run. Hide. Don't-"

Suddenly the Jedi stopped dead in his tracks and started listening. The blaster fire had stopped, and there was a strange noise.

It began slow and steady and airy, and it sounded like the raspy ambient swoosh of a crawling sea and the sound a wave makes just before it crashes. And after the noise drew away, there was a second sound, this one heavy, like the single ominous beat of a great wooden and hide-covered war drum, or like an army stood in formation and all carried spears and slammed the spear butts onto the earth simultaneously. The beat was loud and died quickly, and then there was the sound of the rasped breath being drawn again. The breath, then the drop, the breath, then the drop. It was the unmistakable sound of Darth Vader.

The Jedi's eyes grew wide in the hologram, and then the transmission ended. Bultar Swan clipped her holoprojector back to her belt and stared at Ziro. He seemed pensive.

"What is Order Sixty Seven?" Bultar said at last, and she said it like a statement.

Ziro was still staring at the space where the Jedi's hologram had been.

"Never heard of it," he said.

"You're lying. You know everything that goes on with the Empire."

"I thought so too, but apparently not."

This was not the news Bultar wanted to hear. She was breathing fast, trying to think.

She suddenly noticed clones were inside the Rosemary Rancor. Clones in white and red armor, and in front of them was a clone in solid red armor. The red clone was talking to the man she had choked earlier, and the man was pointing at her direction as he spoke. The clones looked and saw her, and they were coming her way.

Bultar lept behind Ziro and reached for the pistol at her side, and she held the cold black barrel to Ziro's head.

"Take a step closer, and the slug dies," she said.

Ziro started laughing. The clones stood in front of her with their rifles aimed at her.

"Drop the gun, Jedi. There's nowhere for you to go," the red clone said. He hadn't drawn out his two pistols.

Bultar felt the groove of the pistol's trigger. She was trying to think up a way out of the situation. Everyone in the restaurant was watching. The juze band on the stage watched but kept playing. But they mostly just played a fast and tense beat, and the singer had stopped singing.

"It's over," the red clone said.

"You're a traitor, Fox," Bultar said, and she stared straight into the black eye shields of the red clone's helmet. She could tell she had caught him off guard by speaking his name. She had recognized him, even after all these years. It hadn't been hard to deduce, though. What other clone wore lots of red armor and commanded a squad of red-marked clones on Coruscant?

And the moment Bultar said his name, in the exact heartbeat he was processing what she had said, less than a heartbeat, she used the Force and hurled a table at him and the other clones. They crashed hard on the floor against the blow of the table, and they were covered in food and broken bits of ceramic plates and wine glasses, and their armor was wet and dripping with glowing blue Imperial Peacekeeper.

Bultar bolted for the kitchen door. As she ran she used the Force to lift and hurl more tables behind her to keep the clones from chasing her. People were screaming, but she ignored them. She had to get away.

Suddenly an alien sitting at one of the tables kicked his leg out in front of her as she passed him. She tripped and fell hard on the floor, and then the alien grabbed a large glass bottle of glowing blue daiquiri and smashed it onto her head and shattered the bottle to a million glistening pieces. He knocked Bultar unconscious.

"That'll teach you Jedi to disturb the peace!" he yelled.

Everyone in the restaurant started clapping. Someone started whistling. The alien looked smug, and he smiled as if to say, I'm no hero, I'm just a normal guy doing my duty. He gave a hard nod with his head, spat at the Jedi, and resumed eating while everyone still clapped.

The clones had shoved the table off them and were making their way to Bultar Swan, pushing the other tables she had flung out of the way. When they got to her, the red clone, Fox, put a hand on the alien's shoulder. Everyone at his table watched in wonder, they were so impressed.

"You've done the Empire a great service today," Fox said.

"No, no, you're the heroes. You guys are the ones putting your lives on the line every day," he said. He then shouted to everyone in the restaurant. "Let's give a hand to Coruscant's finest, right here!" he said and started clapping, and everyone joined him. Even the Juze band was clapping. Ziro gave a half-hearted clap but was clearly amused.

The clones picked up Bultar Swan and carried her off, and the people cheered as she disappeared outside the front double doors. Cheered, with applause and whooping and whistling. This was the night to be at the Rosemary Rancor.

Meanwhile Fox stayed back to talk to Ziro.

"Sorry for the mess. The Empire will cover the damages."

"It's not a problem. I had fun! And thank you for the gesture. I'm just happy you have her now. She was going to Budestia tonight, you know."

"Then we got her in the nick of time," Fox said, and he turned to leave.

"Fox," Ziro said.

Fox turned and was listening.

"What is Order Sixty Seven?" Ziro asked.

"Where did you hear that?"

"The Jedi told me."

"Do yourself a favor and forget you ever heard it."

"So it's big then, whatever it is."

"It's nothing. And you'd be best to never say it aloud."

Ziro chuckled lowly. "Or what? You'll put me away in that prison of yours? And yes, I know all about your prison beneath the Undercity."

"Don't get arrogant. You know a lot because we let you know a lot. You've been given a lot of slack, Ziro. Don't make a noose out of it."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a promise. This is something you don't want to dig too deeply into. Let it go," Fox said, and he left Ziro there. People cheered Fox as he left, but he ignored them. His concern was with the Jedi he had just captured.

And after that night, everyone who had been there told all their friends, and although the Empire claimed that nothing had happened, that there had never been a Jedi at the Rosemary Rancor, rumors of the Emperor's Eye spread. "The Emperor's Eye is real, and it is keen," they all said. And Bultar Swan was never seen again.


	11. The Tale of John Dreamer

_"Our task is not to uphold objectivity and truth. Our task is to move the masses through images and stories. We must not only infiltrate and overwhelm the universities, but we must also employ all forms of art and entertainment to our cause, from paintings to theatre to films to books to radio to music. Music has a particular priority, as the masses replay their favorite melodies until the lyrics are internalized."_

-Pollux Hax, _Restoring Order_ , first edition

The Tale of John Dreamer, or the Musician's Tale

"Life is short and art is long, but hey baby I can spare a night" is a line from a song that John heard an old man sing at a bar once. He couldn't remember a single line from the rest of the song, nor did he ever learn the song's name. But for whatever reason the one line lingered with him.

John sat in a cushioned swivel chair in the dressing room, strumming his nine-stringed electric songboard with a plasteel pick and humming to his reflection in the mirror. The songboard was a sparkling deep space blue with a pearlish black underglow. His pick was a nebulaic purple. His hair and makeup artist gave one last touch up with a swipe of her makeup brush.

"And you're done!" she chirped.

The girl was a pink Twi'lek named Marue. She was sweet but kind of ditzy for John's liking. He once had a groupie who was a Twi'lek. That girl was hot but the two tentacle things on her head made things weird. Or at least they looked like tentacles. He wasn't sure what they were.

There was a knock on the door. The door opened and in came John's manager. The manager was in his late forties but had aged well, and he was well-groomed with a neatly trimmed beard. He had that cocky look of someone who frequently brags about his teenage years and who never completely matured out of them. The manager had discovered John on the gas farms in Bespin when the boy was only eight years old. John was a prodigy then. Now John was in his early twenties, and the two men were touring and making the name John Dreamer known in every household on every metropolitan gas giant and every backrocket asteroid in the galaxy. The tour had finally led them to Coruscant, the capital of the Empire, where John would sing to tens of thousands. It would be the largest concert the planet had ever seen.

The manager smiled wide. He was dressed in the most expensive and lavish clothes a person could buy in the entire Empire, including an oversized coat that touched down to the floor. It was more like a robe than a coat.

"There he is," said the manager.

"Hey, Chuck," said John.

"You're on in fifteen minutes. You ready to knock them dead, kid?"

"You bet."

The manager rested his hands on John's shoulders. "That's what I like to hear."

"If you think the Corellian and the Naboo girls liked you, wait until you meet the Coruscanti girls. I hear they're crazy about you," Marue teased.

John shrugged. "Girls are girls no matter where you go."

"Enjoy what you got while you got it, kid. One day those girl are going to be middle aged moms, and suddenly your fans won't look so pretty anymore," the manager said.

John laughed. "Faces grow old, sure, but my music will outlast stars."

The manager patted John's cheek. "Keep up the good work and you can buy the stars." He walked back out the dressing room and waved without looking back. "See you before the show!"

Coruscant was the final destination of the tour for a reason. The tour was called A New Peace Tour, in celebration of the birth of the Empire. The concerts featured some of John's older hits, which were mostly love songs, but the concert mainly featured songs from his latest album, Pax Palpatina. The album had become the highest grossing album in the history of the entire galaxy, topping every single planetary chart and winning thousands of awards across a hundred worlds. John never cared much for politics, but the Empire had paid him a fortune to create pro-Empire music. The new album included instant classics such as Only in the Empire, Imperial Kids, Sleek White Star Destroyer, Courtesy of a Coruscanti Girl, and the most popular of all, Imperial March Anthem.

The Empire made sure everyone in the galaxy heard the songs, but no one could have predicted how well received they would be. The songs were blatant propaganda, but they were also good. When John had agreed to write Imperial pop music, he did so for the money, but he also did so for the challenge of writing propaganda with artistic merit. It was easy to write a beautiful love song. It was hard to write a beautiful song about politics.

A second Twi'lek, this one yellow with teal eye shadow and named Kili, strode into the dressing room. While Marue was all fun and teasing, Kili was all business and schedule. She had designed outfits for all of Coruscant's celebrities. John was just the latest of her clients, but she was particularly proud of her work with John.

Marue was putting up all her bottles and brushes and combs and sprays.

"He's all yours," Marue said.

Kili gave a thumbs up to Marue, then turned to John. "Let's get you suited up," she said.

Soon the singer was ready for his performance. Above the waist, he wore a gray sleeveless tank top and a necklace with a pair of durasteel dog tags, and below the waist, he wore clone trooper pants with the iconic white armor pieces set over black fabric. His hair was ragged and long.

Kili set a microphone over his ear. "You're ready to go," she said, and she handed him a pair of acrylifoam earplugs.

John nodded and put the earplugs in his ears. He strode out of the dressing room with his electric songboard strapped over his shoulder and supported in his arms. Even with the earplugs he could hear the fans cheering like mad outside. He strummed his songboard as he went and started humming a song about a redhead on Nar Sharddaa.

Dozens of Gamorreans milled around backstage. The green pig-like species were stupid but good at handling heavy equipment, and they were good workers. They wore baggy safety overalls with bright orange and yellow vests, and some of them had clunky earphone headsets. John's manager always kept Gamorreans in his employ, and they traveled everywhere that John toured. John's manager was giving one of the Garmorreans orders. The Gamorrean nodded and gave something between a grunt and a snort and waddled off cheerily. The manager saw John and ran up to meet him.

"Here we go, kid. It's show time. It's Imperial March Anthem time."

John was just off to the side of the stage. Show time, John thought. He took slow steps onto the stage, and all the girls screamed, and they chanted his name, and John raised his plasteel pick and pointed it starward, and the crowd roared like a star cruiser engine, and then John played the first notes to Courtesy of a Coruscanti Girl, and the audience hushed in awe and listened, and they sang along. John never played a better concert until that night on Coruscant. He played many songs and between songs he laughed and told stories and jokes and told the girls they were beautiful and to never believe anything different, and then he finished with Imperial March Anthem. After the song he said farewell to the girls and exited the stage. John heard the crowd chanting for an encore outside. He strummed his songboard and whistled. He would go back on stage in a moment. But for now, he savored their chanting.

The manager stood at the dressing room door and called out to him.

"Kid, meet me in here."

"Can't it wait?" John said.

"It will only take a second," the manager called, and he disappeared into the dressing room.

The fans outside still chanted, and John hesitated and glanced back in the direction of their voices before following the manager into the dressing room. Inside, the manager leaned against the mirror with his arms crossed.

"What's going on?" John asked. He removed his earplugs.

"Close the door. We need to talk," the manager said.

John turned to close the door. He looked out and a saw a boy walking backstage past the Gamorreans. The boy had messy hair, and he wore clone trooper pants and held a sparkling blue songboard. The boy was walking towards the stage. He was strumming his songboard and whistling as he went.

"What the hell is that?" John asked.

"Close the door," repeated the manager.

"Chuck, there's a guy who looks just like me walking outside."

"I know. Did he see you?"

"No," John said, bewildered and a little frightened.

"Good."

"Who is he?"

"He's you," the manager answered.

"Me?"

The manager reached into his oversized coat and pulled out a gun. He gestured the gun at the swivel chair.

"Close the door and sit down."

John stared at the gun. He closed the door and moved to the chair. He sat down. There was no one else in the room.

"Where's Kili and Marue?" he asked.

"I sent them home."

John stared at the gun. He squeezed tightly on his songboard.

"What is this, Chuck? I don't understand," he said.

"Look, kid, I like you. Honest. I'm going to kill you, but I always hate doing this sort of thing. It'll feel better on my conscience if I explain everything to you."

John struggled to swallow. A tear ran warmly down his cheek. "Please, Chuck," he said. "What did I do? I don't understand."

"Nothing. I'm telling you, it's nothing you did."

"I don't understand."

"I'm going to be straight with you. You're not the real John Dreamer. You're a clone." The manager gestured his gun towards the door. "That kid you saw out there, he's a clone too. He has artificial memories that lead all the way up to this point in time. Most of your memories are artificial too, some taken from the original John Dreamer, some that never happened at all."

John was terrified. More tears ran down his cheeks. "Please, Chuck, please."

" I know it's hard to accept. I mean, the only thing more illegal than cloning is being a Jedi. Not to mention it costs an arm and a leg and maybe your own mother. But it's for a greater purpose. It's for immortality."

The manager moved behind John and put his hands on John's shoulders. The hand with the gun felt heavy.

"Kid, the original John Dreamer is old. No girls will ever scream his name again. But you," said the manager, and he pointed the gun at John's head, "are young. But you're aging. The clone performing right now is four years younger than you. In four years, I'll kill him too."

John jerked in the chair . He was sobbing. "Please, please, please."

"It's truly nothing personal. Believe me, out of all the clones so far, you've been my favorite. You wrote the best music."

"Help!" John cried. "Help!"

The manager rolled his eyes and shot John. John slumped in the chair.

The manager grabbed John's songboard. He took it off John's person and walked out of the dressing room with it. He strummed a calming melody as he left. His fingers nimbly moved over the songboard's nine strings.

He called to one of the Gamorreans. The pig snorted as it waddled over to him. It had an absent-minded look, and its chin was drenched with drool. It was breathing loudly.

"Take care of the clone," the manager said.

The Garmorrean ambled inside the dressing room. It then came out with the body slung over its shoulder. It marched towards the back exit.

The manager continued to play the songboard. He sang a line from a song he had once heard from an old man at a bar on Mygeeto. "Life is short and art is long, but hey baby I can spare a night."

Meanwhile the clone outside finished his encore. The girls were cheering and chanting the name John Dreamer, and John Dreamer smiled with a flaming glint of eternity in his eyes. He pointed his plasteel pick starward, and the crowd roared like a star cruiser engine, and he knew his music would outlast the stars.


	12. The Tale of Dexter Jettster

_"We must isolate and control nonhuman populations through our Alien Protection Zones, and we will say it is to protect them from prejudice. We must forbid communal gatherings, and we will say it is to prevent the spreading of epidemics. And most importantly, we must forbid any and all forms of education, particularly among the children."_

-Pollux Hax, in a proposal letter sent to the Emperor's office

The Tale of Dexter Jettster, or the Chef's Tale

Dexter Jettster believed the most dependable people were the hungry ones. Get the food out too soon, and the service is great but the food is okay. Take too long, and the food is fantastic but the service is terrible so no tip. Time was a great seasoning but could quickly turn into the worst of agitators.

FLO the WA-7 waitress droid stuck a ticket over the kitchen window. Dexter worked fast at the grill. He was sweating in the steamy little diner kitchen. He lurched forward and squinted and read the ticket. It called for blue milk and pancakes. He poured some butter over a searing flame-licked skillet, and the butter sizzled and bubbled and smelled sweet.

FLO rolled up to the window and spoke in a soft voice: "Honey, someone's here to see you."

Dexter rolled up his four sleeves and shuffled out of the kitchen. The diner smelled strongly of butter and hot black caffa. It was also new. Dexter had been forced to abandon his old one when the Empire relocated him to one of their ethnic neighborhoods for nonhumans. A human had no doubt taken over his old diner by now.

A clone sat on one of the stools at the counter.

"What can I do for you, officer?" Dex asked.

"I'm looking for a Jedi," the clone said.

Dex shook his head and waved his arms and said: "No, no, officer. There are no Jedi here."

The clone raised his hand assuringly. "A Jedi named Obi-Wan Kenobi used to frequent your old diner. I want to know when you saw him last."

Dex gave a tick with his tongue. "Years. It's been years," he said, and running a hand down the back of his head he added, "I thought he was dead."

The clone stood up. "Thank you. That's all I needed to know. If you see him, report it immediately."

"Yes sir, I understand," Dex said sheepishly.

The clone nodded, and no one in the diner looked in the clone's direction as he left. Dexter stood dumbfounded for a moment, then suddenly remembered the pancake batter and rushed back into the kitchen. He sighed audibly in relief. The batter hadn't burned.


	13. The Tale of the Womp Rat

_"No class today. Found a womp rat in my house and have to be with the exterminator. Read Chapters 2 and 3 for next week. -PH"_

-Pollux Hax, from a note on a classroom door

The Tale of the Womp Rat, or the Animal's Tale

Coruscant was an ancient and magnificent city of skyscrapers and starships and infinite soldiers clad in white armor, but it was still a city all the same, with litter and dank alleyways and homeless sitting with their backs pressed against buildings and their bottoms on the dirty sidewalks. Coruscant was both an engineering marvel and typical, the capital of the galaxy and exactly like any other urban planet. And while the political dignitaries and the tourists and the representatives of interstellar corporations visited and marveled at the City of the Empire, the locals endured the heavy traffic in their air speeders and on foot in the streets, and they paid their bills and dined at restaurants and shopped at malls, and they seldom paused and reflected on their homeland, if they ever thought about it at all.

And the locals worked and ate and socialized until the sun plummeted beneath the cityscape, until the sky was black and glowing with the lights of buildings and airspeeders and electric billboards, and still the locals bustled, sleepless like the city. And somewhere in the city, beneath the roaring of the air speeders in their unending grid of skylanes, a womp rat scurried. Its feet pattered on metal pipes and permacrete pavement, and it clamored over trash bags and into dumpsters behind buildings, and it slinked close to walls and hugged shadows far from the footfalls and sights of the locals. The rat was hungry, and so it searched for the discarded and unwanted foods of Coruscant.

Fuel-eating engines and electric energy cooked the air warm, and the air was dry and carried the faint odors of chemicals and oils. The rat breathed the air of the city through its tiny nostrils and into its tiny lungs the size of grapes, and its little ribcage expanded as it breathed, and then it coolly exhaled and its little ribs contracted, and the sound of its breath was lost amid the urban ambience like the sound of a falling leaf amidst the bellowing of a railcrawler. The rat's tail bobbed, and it perked its head up and sniffed for food, and it scampered into an alley, and clone troopers were patrolling there.

A clone spotted the rat. He tapped another clone's chest with the back of his hand and said, "Hey, target practice." The rat clamored onto a trash can and studied the metal lid curiously when the clone drew his blaster pistol and aimed. The rat grew bored with the trash can and turned to climb back down, and just as it did the clone fired, and he missed the rat by an inch. Startled, the rat bolted down the trash can and out of the alley, and it was followed by a volley of blaster fire from the clone, and barely the rat made the turn out of the alley and out of the clone's range. "Enough of that. It's just a rat," said one of the clones, and the rat heard the clone's voice as it ran.

The rat ran for some time, and when it finally stopped to catch its breath, it snatched a faint whiff of food and immediately tracked the scent. Suddenly the rat was able to distinguish many varieties of aromas, all of it coming from the same place, all mouth-watering, and finally the rat reached the source: a street market. All the way up and down the street, as far as the rat could see, were carts and tents and stalls and little convenience stores and even parked land speeders, and all of it was selling food. Vendors of all shapes and colors and sizes yelled and advertised and bargained, and the locals swarmed the place like flies on carrion, and the sounds of their footsteps and voices drowned out the rest of the city. But the rat fixated on the smells, on the green and sweet and flowery smells of produce, and on the red smells of bloody and fatty meats, and on the metallic and salty smells of raw fish. And still there were the aromas of freshly baked breads, and earthy spiced soups, and boiled noodles, and fried oils, and the air was hot from the ovens and stoves and fryers and from the body heats of the dense crowds. And the rat felt its insides grumble, and it lowered its head and drooped its ears, and it carefully, slowly crept belly low towards the street of vendors.

Not only were the swarming locals hungry, they were wasteful. Throughout the street, crumbs and dribbles of food lied scattered in random clusters, and occasionally a half-eaten food item or in extremely rare cases something barely touched was accidentally dropped on the floor and abandoned, perfect for the rat's taking. Indeed, food was everywhere, in the stalls and in the carts and on the street and in the trash bins.

One trash bin in particular was nearby, crammed full with a mixture of foods as well as plastic and paper and metal cans. And at the base of the trash bin, just beside it, was a red fruit. There were only two bites taken into the fruit, and there the fruit showed purple and fibrous and juicy. The rat protted towards the fruit unthinkingly, and it was careless and forgot to hug the shadows. The rat reached the fruit, sniffed it and took a bite. The fruit was ripe and sweet, and the rat took a second bite and was nibbling with tranquil delight when a broom came down hard on it. A vendor had spotted the rat and now determined to chase it away. She was a large woman, short and fat with tentacled limbs and wet greenish skin the shade of a murky bog. She yelled in clicks and gurgles swung her broom at the rat again, and the rat sprinted away and retreated to the shadows away from the street.

Once at a safe distance away, the rat turned back longingly at the street full of food and people and blinding city lights, and it abandoned its hope and resolved to scavenge for food elsewhere, away from the clamor of the people and their footfalls and strange languages and angry brooms. The rat searched for some time but found nothing, not a scrap of a cracker or a crumb-filled bag. The rat scurried along packed streets, trying its best to weave between feet without being noticed, and it passed many places, from gyms to clothing stores to doctor offices to hair salons. It passed by many restaurants, but it dared not enter them, though the aromas wafted outside the doors and windows and beckoned it to sneak inside. The rat decided it wanted to escape the crowds, and so it veered off onto a dark and quiet street. The street had few streetlights, and the windows of the buildings were lightless and black and some were boarded up, and the sidewalks festered with the homeless.

A blue-skinned alien coughed. A human bundled in several layers of thick clothes slept on matted pieces of paper caked in something brown, possibly mud or possibly defecation. A woman sat and stared at blank space, unmoving and unblinking. One alien was talking quietly to himself. Two empty glass bottles were at his side. The entire sidewalk was lined with muted and idle people living in poverty, and the place was silent. The rat passed by them all unnoticed.

Nearby on a window sill rested a street cat. The cat was skeletal, and it was dirty and missing fur in large swathes. It lifted its head and casually watched the rat scurry along the street. The cat's tail seemed to sway playfully back and forth as it did. But when the rat got dangerously near, oblivious to the animal on the window sill, the cat stiffened its tail and moved it no longer. The cat was only aware of the rat and nothing else now, and it stared with intense unblinking eyes, and the eyes were grim and lifeless, like those of a corpse or a doll. It didn't stare with a look of hunger, though its body was ravaged, nor with curiosity or bemusement. Its countenance was cold and brooding, as if the cat longed to see the flayed meat and the bones of the rat, almost as a revenge for its own sorry state.

The cat decided the time was right, and the cat pounced at the rat, lunging with two claws and eighty-two fangs. The claws made contact with the rat and squeezed, but the grip wasn't firm and the rat writhed out of the cat's grip and fled. The cat chased after the rat down the impoverished street with a maddened and sadistic longing, but the cat was sick and struggled to keep up. The rat found a chain link fence segmenting off an alley, and it ran to it and squeezed through the space between the chains. The cat met the rat at the fence but couldn't pass through, and so it paced back and forth and watched the rat go, and it eyes gazed on the rat with its dead-like eyes, less from hunger and more from some internal desperation, and the eyes shone an ominous yellow in the darkness.

With the cat far behind now, the rat was free to catch its breath and relax its muscles, though it remained highly alert. The alley was mostly empty, just some back doors to businesses and a large blue dumpster. The rat approached the dumpster. It was about to climb into it when it spotted something move in the darkness under the dumpster. The rat froze. It then caught the glimpse of a hand, a human hand. The rat inched closer and saw that two people were lying on their backs in a narrow slice of space under the dumpster. One person was much taller than the other, the rat observed, and there was absolutely no space left between their chests and the base of the dumpster. The two people had to look to the side just to fit their heads under it. The smaller of the two was gazing directly at the rat.

"Master, it's a womp rat," the smaller one said anxiously.

"Don't scream," whispered the larger. "It won't hurt you. It's harmless."

"But I'm scared of rats."

"Don't scream. Clones might hear us. Ignore it, and it will leave you alone. It won't hurt you."

"Okay, Master. I'll try."

The rat decided the two meant no harm, and it studied them for some time before climbing into the dumpster. It inspected the trash bags and found nothing to eat. It licked it paws. It then found a comfortable spot on one of the trash bags and curled up and fell asleep.


	14. The Tale of Twelfth Brother

_"The Emperor has only one apprentice: Darth Vader. Darth Vader has twelve apprentices. They are the Starkillers. They were Jedi once, but were captured and tortured by Darth Vader until they went insane and became corrupted slaves of the dark side. It is their sole mandate to hunt Jedi, and they always hunt alone."_

-Pollux Hax, _Accounts of the Fates of the Jedi_

The Tale of Twelfth Brother, or the Assassin's Tale

It is strange to behold the great capital of Coruscant again, its glistening spires and ancient roads. Like my Brothers and my Sisters, I have been gone hunting Jedi on planets and moons and asteroids throughout the infinite sprawl of space. I have seen vast duned wastelands, murky jungles, windy ice fields, and volcanic ranges oozing red rivers and belching toxic fumes, all for the sole purpose of tracking and eradicating Jedi. The Jedi are enemies of the Empire, and I not only punish them with impunity but also with fervor, for the extinction of the Jedi is a spiritual war that demands such. And now I have returned to Coruscant, the gray heart of the Empire, the footstool of the Emperor and, once many years ago, my home.

I have not seen this marvelous city in nearing three years, as have neither my Brothers nor my Sisters, for our duty resides among the stars, on remote and hostile planets where even warrior-bred clones are insufficient for the task of hunting Jedi. And among the stars my siblings remain, but I have been summoned by my Master to return to Coruscant for a special assignment, namely to track a killer. First Brother, the first Starkiller and a hero of the Empire, is dead. Someone murdered him with poison, and so I have been ordered to exact a swift revenge not just upon the killer's body but also upon the killer's reputation and, if the Force allows it, his spirit.

I am in the cockpit of a shuttle and flying it high over the regality of Coruscant's skyscrapers. I ease the shuttle to a stop, and it hovers in place. I then descend the shuttle slowly into a pit below. There are many pits scattered over Coruscant; perfectly round and large enough to fit behemoth star cruisers, the pits resemble giant craters interrupting the gray of the city, and inside the pits is abyss-black nothing. Deep inside the pits resides the lower level of Coruscant. The lower level is a subterranean metropolis called the Undercity.

I sink deeper into the pit, and soon darkness encapsulates me utterly. The noisome hubbub of the city above fades to a stifled muffle, then to nothing, and all is silent for some time. Then I hear the suggestion of a new noise, like some faint buzzing, and the noise grows louder and hive-like, and I recognize it as the tense droning of the Undercity.

The Undercity as one would rightly infer is a dark place. Gothic metal skyscrapers jut out of the shadowy streets and rise high like cave crags. And above is an invisible ceiling that resembles the void of space, as if a starless and moonless night sky hangs over the city. That's not to say there isn't light here; there's a profusion of it. Light blooms from streetlights and billboards and windows and signs. The rundown buildings scream for attention with their busied and dazzling lights. The lights mostly range from whites to golds to oranges, but some of the buildings vomit a gamut of color, from intoxicated pinks to acid greens to drowsy, seductive blues. The Undercity is a sea of lights, and yet the greatest lights come from above, high over the city's skyscrapers, where the pits lead back to the surface of Coruscant. The pits are disks of white light in the black vaulted ceiling, and black specks of starships like gnats fly in and out of them, occasioned by the black triangle of a Star Destroyer. Despite all that light, despite the false moons in the false sky and the shines and glows of the Undercity, it is still dark here. It's no mystery why Jedi find this place tempting to hide, here in perpetual night.

I weave my shuttle between the skyscrapers of the Undercity, like a scavenger bird eyeing for a freshly dead carcass. My shuttle is the new Delta-class model, stark white and bat-like and most importantly silent. I maneuver the shuttle towards a docking bay. The bay is a great ringed wall containing individual hangars throughout it. The middle of the ring is an open area that was formerly used for pilots and passengers to amble and to converse and bargain; now the open area is patrolled and monitored by clones. I ease the shuttle into one of the hangars inside the ringed wall, and I land smoothly. I activate the shuttle door opening sequence, and the door hisses, and hot steam billows around the door frame. The door opens, and I walk out of the shuttle and am released like a vindictive spirit out of the gates of a Sith temple.

The docking bay is dank and trashed. The civilians in the bay carry about their business, but they clearly take notice of me in my black robes and hood and mask. Some take a level of interest and glance sideways at me, some become noticeably anxious, and a few even hurry off out of the bay, but everyone acts as casually as possible; this facade they all share in common. The clones on the other hand notice me and continue their work unthinkingly. And in one of the hangar doors near to mine, an Imperial spy stands idling in front of a V-wing starfighter. The spy is a Kubaz, one of the insect people in service to the Empire. I am scheduled to rendezvous with him. I approach and address him: "Bug." "Sith," he says in Kubazian. The Kubaz tongue, it is worth noting, is insectoid and comprised of clicked and chirped syllables. It is a complex language, and only clones and Starkillers are trained to understand it. Thus their words are indecipherable to unwanted ears, and their information is never jeopardized. Not even Darth Vader fully understands the bug people. The Kubaz, on the other hand, understand many languages.

"We found your killer," the spy says in his native tongue, and adds: "He was dead when we found him." This is bitter news, and I feel my spirits lower. "So why am I here?" I say, a little irritable. "We identified the body. The killer was a bounty hunter named Victorado. He was a Togruta, from the grassland world of Shili. He did high profile stints for the Separatists, Crimson Dawn Syndicate, and Black Sun Cartel, among others." "So he has a decent resume. What of it?" "We found his body in the Undercity, and the murder was intentional and professional. We suspect Ziro the Hutt is involved."

I understand the spy now. Ziro the Hutt is not just a crime boss but the only one permitted to operate on Coruscant, and he's virtually untouchable to his rivals. He has cooperated with the Empire since its inception and has even acted as a friend, providing tips on Jedi in exchange for being left alone. The Empire has always respected its unspoken bargain with Ziro and turned a blind eye to his most illicit activities, so long as those activities remained buried in the Undercity. Ziro knows everything that happens in the Undercity, and if an elite bounty hunter was murdered here, he not only knows about it but possibly orchestrated it. He runs a famous restaurant in the Undercity called the Rosemary Rancor; I will find him there.

I bow respectfully and say to the spy: "Thank you for your time. You've been most helpful." "If there is anything else you need, let me know." "There is. I need you to find everything you can linking Ziro and First Brother. I suspect there's more to this than a dead bounty hunter." The spy nods, and I turn and make my way out of the docking bay, out past its ringed wall and onto the Undercity's streets.

The Undercity can only be described as a place for the wretched. It's a grimy place littered with filth and bizarre aliens, and the aliens roam in crowds that meld into amoebic masses of shadow. Not one of the alien faces is alike to another, and not one is human. The only human faces are those of the clones concealed under skull-white helmets. A clone stands at his post across from a bar and nods at me. In front of the bar is the purple hologram of an alien woman dancing erotically, and the purple light reflects off the black glass of the clone's helmet. A block over, two columns of clones march in synchronized footfalls. The city is otherwise populated exclusively by aliens, particularly those of the uglier and more inferior breeds. And here no alien glances my way as I pass. They know the Empire is watching them, both through the eyes of the clones and through eyes unseen, and so they keep largely to themselves and are careful. Everyone must be careful on Coruscant.

I wind down many streets and cut through many alleys, past bars and clubs and restaurants that all seem near-identical to each other in their rotting conditions and in their bombardments of bright lights. It isn't long before I reach the Rosemary Rancor though. The exterior of the place is a ramshackled building like any of the others and would stand unnoticed if it weren't for the bright neon sign situated high over the front door. The inside, on the other hand, is a place of luxury, almost palatial, with rose red walls drizzled in golden lines, immaculate carpet, dim lighting, and smooth juze music playing. The tables are covered in white silk cloth, and just above each table is a floating orb centerpiece that glows pinkish white. Aliens dressed in their most expensive clothes sit at the tables, and they eat and chat and drink a champagne that glows blue, and there is a calming ambience of voices and softly clattering glass. Somewhere a wealthy Vulptereen opens a bottle of champagne with a loud pop, and foamy blue liquid spews out from the bottle, and the women joined at his table laugh and clap.

A sleek, chrome waiter droid approaches me and says: "Welcome to the Rancor. How many, sir?" "I'm looking for Ziro," I say. The droid is a bit startled, but says right this way and takes me to him. Ziro sits at a large table alone. He's a corpulent, grotesque slug creature scrawled in acid yellow tattoos. Plates with strange and exotic foods are mounded on his table; I see black snakes, bubbling orange goop, tentacled fish, and hundred-legged insects. I join Ziro at his table and observe him cram a baked rat into his mouth and swallow it greedily.

"You should be careful eating something that big. You could choke," I say with friendly warmth. Ziro sees me and upon recognizing me laughs merrily. "Twelfth Brother, my good friend, it's been a while. How goes the Jedi hunting business?" he says in Huttese. I answer in Basic: "It's going fine. We expect the Jedi to be extinct by the end of next summer." "That's very good news. I wish you and your Sith brethren the best of luck."

Ziro used to be physically smaller than his is now, more docile, even cowardly. He's changed since Order 66. He's become proud, and he's grown larger than most of the other Hutts. He only speaks in Huttese now, as a stature marker. The Empire knows he's planning an interstellar turf war with his relative from the desert planet Tatooine, Jabba the Hutt, and most of the Kubaz spies suspect he will win that war. He has become powerful in the days of the Empire, and I sincerely do consider him a friend.

At the far end of the room is a raised stage. A juze band is set up on the stage with their instruments, and a woman stands in front of them. She's beautiful, a Nautolan, one of the green fish peoples known for their squid-like tendrils for hair. Suddenly there is the steady fast throbbing of the drums, and a hush settles over everyone. The band begins a soft tune, and the woman opens her mouth and offers her first note. Her voice is sublime, and although I don't understand the words, for she sings in her native tongue, her song makes the air smell like the ocean and the room gently rock like the swaying sea of her homeworld.

Ziro turns to me during the song and whispers: "I heard about your Brother, by the way. I'm so sorry about the news. It's terrible, and I pray whoever killed him will pay." "His killer is already dead." "Good. I hope the bastard suffered." "I'm sure he did." "Were you and First Brother close?" "No." "All the same, you have my deepest condolences. He was a hero, and I don't say that lightly. If there's anything I can do, don't hesitate to ask." "Thank you, Ziro. Your words mean a lot." "Of course."

We sit in silence for some time and enjoy the music of the Nautolan woman. Finally I break the silence. "If I remember correctly, your former singer was a Kaminoan," I observe. "Yes, she was." "What happened to her?" "She left, so I found a replacement. This girl's excellent, born and raised in the oceans of Glee Anselm." "Some find." "I'd like to think so."

The Nautolan finishes her song, and everyone in the restaurant applauds, and many stand, and a few cheer and whistle. The woman smiles and bows gracefully. While the applause goes on, Ziro turns to me and says: "As happy as I am to see old friends, I suspect you are here on business." I consent with a tilt of my head. "We must speak in private," I say."You have my attention. We will speak here," he says. I nod. "Have you ever heard of a bounty hunter named Victorado?" "Of course. He's used many aliases, but yes, I know him." "He was the one who murdered First Brother. Then our spies found him dead here in the Undercity." Ziro answers unblinkingly. "Yes, I had Victorado killed. It was a matter of settling a personal vendetta." "What vendetta?" "He offended me, and this offense was grave enough to justify death." "Do you have any idea who hired him to kill First Brother." "I'm sorry; I have nothing for you," Ziro says apologetically. "Is there anyone you know, a contact, who might know something?" Ziro pauses and thinks, and after a moment says: "I know someone who might be able to help. He lives on one of the moons orbiting Boktan V, and he's good at retrieving that sort of information. If you wish, I can put you in contact with him." "That would be appreciated."

The juze band begins another melody, and the Nautolan sings what seems to be a melancholic love song, though I don't know positively. Ziro shoves another baked rat down his gullet and enraptured studies the woman, partly out of appreciation for her talent and beauty, for there is a glistening wonder in his eyes, and partly out of lust, for he stares with blatant sensual appetite. Meanwhile my comlink suddenly chimes, and I excuse myself for the table and make my way for the restrooms. Inside, I answer, and I hear the Kubaz spy's voice on the other end of the comlink, saying in Kubazian: "Sith, I found a connection between First Brother and Ziro." "Go on." "A few months ago, First Brother visited Ziro at the Rosemary Rancor for information on a Jedi he was tracking. One of Ziro's singers fell in love with him, and he snuck her onto his shuttle and left Coruscant with her." I process the information. It seems like fairly damnable evidence against Ziro, but Ziro has always been a friend not just to the Empire's cause but to the Starkillers especially. Surely Ziro would not murder a friend over a girl. I did not know about the girl either, as the Starkillers have no contact with one another. Now there are two murders, and Ziro the Hutt is the only link between the two. "Thank you," I say to the spy. "Yes sir. Is there anything else you need?" "No, that's all." Thus our conversation ends, and I deactivate the comlink and reinsert it into my belt. I stand thinking for a moment and then return to the restaurant proper.

As soon as I leave the restrooms, I suddenly smell the aroma of refined and seasoned culinary dishes. And on the ceiling is the most iconic feature of the restaurant: a massive painting. The painting is a sweeping panorama of a Star Destroyer flying over golden and white clouds at sunrise. The artwork fills me with a peculiar awareness of how much the galaxy has changed in so short a time, and I take a brief moment to study it before making my way back to Ziro's table. I join him again, and he's slurping a black snake and watching the singer completely focused, almost unblinking. I interrupt his trance and say: "Ziro, what was Victorado's offense against you?" Ziro glances at me and then returns his gaze to the singer. "He gave my cousin Jabba certain information," he says coolly. "What information?" "It's not your concern." "It's imperial concern." Ziro flashes a brief expression of anger and offense, but he quickly assumes a calm facade. "I do not appreciate your prying into my personal matters, Twelfth Brother. But if I must tell you, the information involved plans on taking control of planets in Jabba's territory. The plans are null now, thanks to the bounty hunter. And now Jabba knows my intentions."

"I'm sorry for prying. I did not mean to upset you." "It's all well; no harm done. It's a sore subject, and I appreciate your apology. But Twelfth Brother, and I will only say this once, never force my hand again." "I understand." We sit together and enjoy the music of the singer and juze band for some time. I wait, then turn and whisper to Ziro: "It's strange though. Victorado was a Togruta." Ziro looks confused. "What about it?" "Oh, nothing. I just find it strange." I rise out of my chair. "Well, I best be going. Thank you for your help. I'm heading to Boktan V immediately. Make sure your contact is there to meet me." "I will. Safe travels, my friend." "Thank you. May you continue to prosper here and abroad." Ziro nods graciously, and I turn to leave the restaurant.

As I walk for the front door of the restaurant, I extend my mind into the dark side of the Force. I use the Force to reach for Ziro's neck. I wrap invisible fingers around the fat rolling down his slimy throat, and I squeeze. I can hear Ziro choking behind me as I leave. A few notice the kingpin gasping for air and stare, then more. I hear Ziro crash onto the floor, and he squirms and writhes and knocks over his table and its mounds of food. I imagine his face turning purple and his eyes red and bulging. People rise out of their chairs and watch in horror, and a woman screams. I know Ziro is dead when everyone starts panicking. I leave the restaurant. I feel a little cold and adjust my black robes. I pass by a clone and nod casually at him as I make my way back to the docking bay.

I always respected Ziro, but it disappoints me that he is a liar. Ziro claims that Victorado gave Jabba information, and that's why Victorado is dead. But Jabba the Hutt hates Togrutas. He never allows them into his palace, much less speaks to one. The truth is this: First Brother runs off with Ziro's most prized singer. Ziro hires Victorado to kill First Brother, then has Victorado killed to bury his own sin. I do feel a bit regretful for killing Ziro. He was a respectable figure, always helpful to the Empire, and a good friend.

I return to my shuttle and chart a course for the stars once again. Order 66 must continue. As I fly high over the Undercity and towards one of the shining white pits above, I give one final glance at Ziro's cthonic realm. Rest in peace, my old friend, and may the Force guide you in the afterlife.


	15. The Tale of the Hulk

_"The Magic Stardust Company keeps buying up smaller corporations and their intellectual properties. I just wish they would start making things that are original for once."_

-Pollux Hax, from his blog

The Tale of the Hulk, or the Bonus Tale, taken straight from the adventures on Planet Hulk

 _(Indulge me this one time.)_

When the Star Destroyers came no one knew what to make of them.

"Who do you think they are?" asked Caiera, gazing up at the sky.

"I don't know, but I intend to find out," came the answer.

She stood on a high balcony overlooking the city and its desert outskirts, where cragged red rocks jutted like towers out of the dunes. Her husband stood beside her. He was the strongest warrior alive, and king of Sakaar.

He gently placed a large green hand on her shoulder.

"If they mean harm," the king said, "they're playing with nuclear fire, and they're going to get burned."

And the Star Destroyers landed in the desert outskirts, and an army of strange men in white armor marched in formation out of the behemoth hulls, and the army was as numerous as the stars.

"Gods," Caiera muttered.

The king smiled. "I fought a god once. I walked away."

'

"Sir, we had a problem securing Sakaar," said Jael Allister, a frail little man in a neat, steam-pressed Imperial officer uniform.

"What problem is that, admiral?" said a deep voice, the voice of Darth Vader. The two spoke long distance via telescreen.

"We sent in three legions of clones, and they were all destroyed. We even lost a Star Destroyer. Sakaar is too strong, Lord Vader."

Darth Vader didn't answer, and there was only the uncomfortable sound of Vader's mechanical breathing. Allister felt Vader's patience wearing thin by the second, and he continued.

"We did everything we could, Lord Vader. It was a lost cause," he added, a bit nervously.

"And you lost a Star Destroyer," said Vader, unamused.

"No! Well, yes sir. But you don't understand. There was this man. He's like nothing we've ever seen. He ripped our V-wings in half. Our blasters couldn't kill him."

"Your failure disappoints me. Wait there and activate your homing beacon. I will go and deal with Sakaar myself."

"Sir. We- We left. We left the planet, and we will have to look for it all over again if you wish to invade."

"You what?" Vader said, and there was anger in his voice.

"We were being hammered- We-"

Vader reached into the Force, choked him and killed him right there, and Vader heard the body drop lifeless on the metal floor.

Admiral Allister had discovered Sakaar by accident, when his fleet had gotten lost in uncharted Wild Space. The Empire was never able to find the planet again. And it remained lost forever in the depths of Wild Space, somewhere beyond the galaxy's edge.


	16. The Tale of Boba Fett

_"There was a brief period when a terrorist plagued Coruscant: the infamous 'Boba.' Rumor is that the terrorist was only a child, but there is no evidence to support this. The terrorist was most likely a Jedi seeking to torment the Emperor and the good citizens of this great and glorious planet."_

-Pollux Hax, "Psychopaths, Monsters, and the Ungrateful: Reflections on the Notorious Enemies of the Empire"

The Tale of Boba Fett, or the Bounty Hunter's Tale

 _10 Nillo 2 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 5_

"Trust no one, use everyone." That was something my father told me many years ago.

It's been hard trying to establish a reputation for myself as a serious bounty hunter. Everyone treats me like a joke, like I'm some stupid starry-eyed kid. I'm a better pilot than half of them and a better shot than all of them put together. I already have over a dozen successfully fulfilled bounties under by belt. And still no one takes me seriously. That's why I'm here on Coruscant. I killed Cad Bane - he was supposedly a good bounty hunter - and now I'm going to deliver the body to Ziro the Hutt. I don't know why, but the Hutt placed a hefty price on Bane's head, and now that reward money is mine. After this, everything is going to change. I know it. Cad Bane was a serious target, and everyone respected him. Now everyone is going to respect me.

I can't let myself become arrogant though. I have to keep a cool head, because one slip-up is all it takes to die. My father taught me that too. I won't repeat his mistake.

'

 _22 Vayd 2 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 8_

I've been working for Ziro for a couple of months now. He gives good work, and he pays well too. I can tell he really likes me. I admit he's growing on me, but I don't trust him any more than I'd trust a starving rancor for a pet.

This city is growing on me too. I never realized how many bounties there were to collect just in the planet's Undercity alone. It feels like I'm living in some meteor-cave filled with pirate treasure. This place is so much better than Kamino. Kamino was depressing and rainy, and the insides of the buildings were so empty and white-washed I'm surprised I didn't lose my mind. Coruscant on the other hand is dangerous, and the women here are gorgeous, and I love everything about this place.

Still, I haven't gotten used to the clone troopers here. It's weird, because I grew up surrounded by them. But back on Kamino, they were training for war. They were cool to watch. Here, they patrol and spy constantly. I never considered them my brothers, even back on Kamino, but now they just remind me of droids. Soulless, mindless droids. And what's worse, if they catch you hunting a target, they won't hesitate to kill you. The Empire turns a blind eye to Ziro the Hutt, but even though Ziro is protected, his bounty hunters aren't. We're all fair game if we're caught attempting a capture or killing. I've already had to kill several clones just to remain incognito.

But the clones aren't even the issue, at least not really. The clones are extremely good at their job. They're war-hardened killers, but I can handle them. The issue is the Kubaz spies. Those bug people see everything. They make my job extremely dangerous. I have a sneaking suspicion a Kubaz is going to catch me one of these days, and then it'll be the end for me.

'

 _3 Palpune 3 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 28_

I had sex for the first time last night. Don't even remember the girl's name. She was gorgeous though, a Twi'lek. She was older than me too. Maybe mid-twenties.

Girls respect men with wealth and reputation, it turns out. Then again, I'm not so bad-looking either.

'

 _19 Reve 3 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 41_

It's Empire Day today. There was a huge parade earlier, and there's going to be fireworks tonight in front of the Empire's palace.

I will be assassinating a target during those fireworks. An Imperial senator spoke out against Ziro a week ago, and Ziro placed a bounty on the senator's head. I'm collecting that bounty.

It's funny. I don't think the Empire will care if the senator disappears, and to be frank, I don't think they'll even notice. They might give Ziro a lot of leeway, but this guy's a nobody who only got some news coverage for making bold claims against the Hutt of the Undercity. What a moron. And everyone will forget him in two weeks exactly.

Looking back on my time with Ziro, I've learned a lot. It's true what they say, that experience is everything. Natural skills are important, and training is good, but on-the-job experience really is the best teacher. And now I've earned Ziro's full trust. He even gave me my own Mandalorian jetpack. It's solid chrome and works like a charm. I asked him if I could have a complete Mandalorian armor set, and he said there's no sense in having one since I'd just outgrow it in a year or two. He said that even though I can't have the armor, I should at least learn how to use the jetpack. I figured it out quickly. (Thankfully I've always been a fast learner.)

I now have almost nine dozen bounties on my résumé. People take me seriously now, and when I walk into a bar or into Ziro's restaurant, the other bounty hunters will casually talk to me, and not just like an adult but like an equal. I also have a lot of credits in my bank account. I spent a good chunk of it upgrading the _Slave I_ , and I even repainted her chrome and black. She's a sight to behold, and when the senator sees her landing on the platform in front of his bedroom suite tonight, he'll piss his pants.

'

 _2 Plagary 4 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 43_

I screwed up for the first time today. My father always said "Never forget to look up. Sometimes clouds like to piss red lasers on you." Well I forgot to look up.

I had just shot and killed a target in an alley. I thought we were alone, but then I had the feeling I was being watched. I looked up, and sure enough a Kubaz spy had heard the blaster shot and was staring at me now. As soon as I saw the spy, I knew I had royally messed up. The spy just stood there, looking down at me, but I knew a dozen clones were me being sent to my location. Worse, more spies were on their way too. I don't know how the spies do it. It's almost like they can all talk to each other simultaneously. I think their species might be telepathic, or at least that's my current theory. And once a spy catches sight of you, you might as well have a giant white spotlight on you because you don't escape them.

The first thing I did was shoot the Kubaz spy, of course. He fell off the roof and into the alley. But he didn't make a sound. No screaming, no anything. He just landed dead at my feet. Next thing I ran for my life. Clones were chasing after me. And clones kept blocking off the streets trying to box me in. Their strategy would have worked if it weren't for my jetpack, and so I was able to just fly over them. But I was only narrowly dodging their blaster fire. One of the plasma blasts hit my arm, and it stung like hell, but I thankfully I couldn't bleed out. My father cloned me with Rancor drool instead of blood. The drool is thick, and so wounds always heal over before I can lose too much.

The Rancor drool was coming in handy, but soon my jetpack was low on fuel, and the _Slave_ _I_ was still a ways away. I remember feeling like I had failed my father. I had gotten sloppy and now I was going to die for it.

I ran inside a club to hide. The spies had no doubt seen me enter, and clones would be rushing inside any minute. I didn't have a lot of time. I found a human roughly my height and put my gun to his back and told him to not make a sound or I'd shoot, then I told him to go to the restroom stalls. We went into a stall, and I had him trade clothes with me. I then gave him my jetpack and told him to fly outside with it, or I'd blast his head clean off. He did, and the clones shot him down immediately. The clones surrounded the body while I snuck out the club from a back window and made it to the _Slave I_ undetected.

Now I'm starting to wonder if I'm getting any better at this job. My father never would have jeopardized the bounty like I just did. Maybe nothing has changed at all, and I'm still that scared little kid clutching his dad's severed head. I'll never be my father. I see that now.

But then again, maybe I'm not supposed to be. I'm my father's clone, one hundred percent DNA match and all, but I'm not him. He's a skeleton buried under Geonosian sands, and I'm alive with rancor drool pumping in my veins. I'm alive and working in the Undercity.

I remember my father's lessons by heart, every proverb, mantra, and saying, and I employ them whenever I can. But I need to start doing things my way too. I'm not Jango Fett. I'm Boba.

'

 _1 Phobe 6 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 86_

Nothing major to report, but I did see something interesting today. I was on a rooftop with my sniper rifle, waiting for my target to walk into my sights. While waiting, I saw a clone trooper in solid red armor. He was running from rooftop to rooftop and had a squad of Imperial Police with him. I've never seen a red clone before. I asked Ziro about it, and he said he didn't know anything about red clones.

'

 _8 Maus 6 YE_

 _Boba_

 _Journal Entry 87_

Ziro the Hutt died last night. I just found out the news. Apparently, the slug died choking on his own food at dinner. At least, that's what the official Imperial reports say. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's actually what happened, but you never know with the Empire. Those guys spout out more propaganda, lies and rumors than a Hutt can eat paddy frogs.

I admit, it's surprisingly hard that the Prince of Coruscant is gone. He was a reliable client, but he was like an adopted father to me too. I never told him that, and I wouldn't even tell his ghost that now. But it's true. Now there's nothing left for me here, and I have to start looking elsewhere for work. Thankfully the credits I made here will more than cover my living expenses long enough for me to find a new long-term client. (Maybe I'll try another Hutt.)

Still, I'll never forget my time here on Coruscant. I learned a lot, made connections, had sex with women twice my age, and made lots of credits. More than that, it was here that I finally outgrew my father's shadow. Everyone knows my name now.


	17. The Tale of Jar Jar Binks

_"Jar Jar Binks is a childish clown, but he is also the purest and most innocent soul in politics. He represents the last breath of the Republic."_

-Pollux Hax, "A List of Notable Imperial Senators and Their Biographies"

The Tale of Jar Jar Binks, or the Politician's Tale

 _ORDER 67 Part I_

There are many breeds of silences, some tranquil and pleasant, some disturbing and eerie, some lonely. Here in the vast hallways and corridors and rooms of the Imperial Executive Building, the silence was the kind one finds in a city after an evacuation. It was an odd silence, and it felt out of place, as if there had been noises and ruckus and music not too long ago, but then it all vanished at once, leaving behind a cold draft and an awakeness to time's passing. It was a nostalgic silence, and memories seemed to flow in it like black mottled leaves down a chilled and gurgling stream.

Jar Jar Binks was a member of the Imperial Senate, representing the planet Naboo, and he was being escorted down the many and perfectly straight halls and amidst the sad and sterile quiet. Two clones walked in line beside him, guns in their hand, and their armored feet made a rhythmic clatter.

The Emperor had remodeled the Imperial Executive Building to resemble the great palaces of Naboo. The windows were tall and narrow, and the stone tiles were regal and patterned, and the curtains were silk, and the pillars were abundant. The daylight shone through the windows as beams of amber-colored fog, and dust particles wafted through it like particles in the sea, and the light burned on the tiles in bright warm rectangles. And along the walls were statues of Imperial heroes: politicians, military, scientists and the like. And the statues were all of red marble.

Despite the red marble statues, and despite the sad silence and the clones marching beside him, Jar Jar remembered home and for a brief moment thought of Naboo, of its emerald plains and whooshing seas, and he remembered when the men in white armor invaded the city and overran it. The Republic had become an Empire, and now the Imperial armies came rushing in, and the flags that flew were no longer Naboo's but the Emperor's.

Suddenly Jar Jar was in the halls of the Theed Palace on Naboo. He had been speaking with the Queen, and they watched together from the window as Imperial soldiers swarmed the steps outside and breeched the palace doors.

"This is it," said the Queen coolly. "They're inside now."

Jar Jar put a hand gently on her back. "Meesa has known Palpatine for a very, very long time, your highness, and meesa know heesa won't hurt you," he said, and he said it exactly like that, word for word.

And the Queen nodded and smiled. Jar Jar still remembered that smile. It was sad, adn the Queen's eyes had a look to them, a look of knowing she would die, even when Jar Jar didn't think she would. She was executed the next day, to squash any hope or inspiration for an uprising. Her body was cremated and buried on Coruscant.

"Heesa won't hurt you. Meesa promis," Jar Jar said, and he said it aloud.

The clones turned and looked at Jar Jar. The Gungan snapped back to cold alertness. Suddenly he was back on Coruscant, in the vast and empty halls and among the red marble statues, and the two clones stood beside him watching.

"Sorry. Thinking aloud," the Gungan said.

Jar Jar and the clones continued their walk, and meanwhile Jar Jar watched their shadows move across the sunlit patches on the tiles. At last they reached a pair of looming doors. The doors were of red-colored wood, and on the door frame were carved little roses and leafy vines, and on each of the doors themselves was an engraving of a Krayt dragon. There were no door knobs. Only a Force user could open the twin doors, Jar Jar figured.

One of the clones knocked on the door, then stepped back in line with Jar Jar and the other clone. The doors swung open smoothly and noiselessly, without so much as a single creak. And inside, at the far end of the room, the Emperor sat, cloaked in black, and scribbling something onto a page. Behind him, just to the side, stood his secretary Sly Moore.

The Emperor glanced up from the page and casually set down his fountain pen. The pen was silver with a slender golden ring wrapped around its middle.

"Ah, Senator Binks. A pleasure, my old friend."

"Likewise. Yoosa- You summoned me," said Jar Jar, resisting the urge to wince. He had been trying to lose his Gungan vernacular for some time now, and it hadn't been coming easy, and he still slipped back into it now and then.

"I did. It's about the vote tonight."

"I see."

The Imperial Senate was only a formality at this point, to give the allusion of choice and representation for the people living on the thousand planets of the Empire. The Emperor's word was not only final but holy. He permitted votes for small and uninteresting things, but it was he who decided on the large issues and on the issues that mattered to him. But tonight was unusual because it was tonight that the Imperial Senate would vote on something big. The Imperial Senate would be voting on whether or not to replace the clone army with human citizens of the Empire.

"Senator," the Emperor began, "what do you think of the vote tonight?"

"I expect a high turnout, especially since the senators are so divided. Half feel the cloning program is too expensive and that allowing citizens to join the military will boost patriotism. And half feel the clones are superior since they are bred specifically for war and trained since birth. I suspect the vote will end in favor of replacing the clones, though."

"Clones have become quite unpopular, I should think."

"People don't trust them."

"And what is your opinion?"

"Meesa-" said Jar Jar, and correcting himself continued: "I think that if we end the cloning program and pay cheap salaries to enlisted men instead, we will have to invest more in gear, weapons, and spacecraft to make up for the loss of clone expertise."

The Emperor didn't respond but considered what Jar Jar was saying.

"Both the military budget and the size of our armies will remain astronomic, no matter what happens. Nothing will change much," Jar Jar added.

"It sounds as if you think this vote to be unimportant."

It was true. Jar Jar thought that if the vote was actually important, there wouldn't be a vote, and the Emperor would decide. But he couldn't say that and so he answered: "Forgive my seeming indifference. I go to so many of these votes that I just think of this one as just another check-yes-or-no slip. It's just another day in the office for me."

The Emperor nodded, smiling a little. "I suppose that's fair." He then looked at the two clones. "Leave us," he said. He glanced at his secretary and added, "You too, Miss Moore." Everyone cleared, and it was just Binks and the Emperor now.

"I wonder what the clones think of possibly being replaced," the Emperor mused.

"They're mindless droids. I doubt they care much at all."

"They might care, but they're disciplined. They won't dare say anything openly."

"Maybe."

"Senator Binks, I have a favor to ask of you," the Emperor said.

"Ask away.

"I happen to agree with you. Tonight's vote could complete alter our military, but in the ultimate panorama of things it won't really change much. I don't care which way you vote."

"Yes sir."

"What I need from you is to give a little announcement. You said it yourself: there wil be a high turnout tonight. I need you to speak with as many senators as possible to hear. I need you to say a Jedi attempted to assassinate you."

"To lie, then."

"It has been seven years since Order Sixty Six. People are growing tired of Jedi hunting and anti-Jedi propaganda. To put it simply, people are exhausted from hating."

"But people will never trust Jedi again, your highness. Your propaganda has won out."

"You're right. The damage has already been done, and the public will forever hold a prejudice and skepticism towards Jedi. But we are at the last stretch of this Purge, and I need the public to have full fervor towards the destruction of the Jedi. And I need you to rekindle that fervor, Senator Binks. People trust you, and if they hear that the most innocent person in the Empire was almost murdered by a Jedi, they'll want to beat any last Jedi dead in the streets."

"But your highness, even if I could lie to the Senate - and I'm not sure that I could - I'm a poor speaker. The Senate won't take anyone seriously who accidently speaks in yoosas and heesas and sheesas. They've never taken me seriously."

"But they will. You don't realize what you mean to the Empire, but I assure you: you mean a great deal."

"Thank you, your highness."

"Please. It's Sheev. It's always been Sheev, Jar Jar."

"Thank you, Sheev."

"Now go. I don't expect poetry, but I expect a good story."

"Meesa will try."

Jar Jar Binks spent the rest of that afternoon in his room, staring at the wall, the ceiling, the window, and finally at a dresser mirror. He had aged quite a bit since he was first appointed senator. It was still his face he saw in the mirror, just older, and maybe a little sadder.

He thought about what the Emperor had asked of him, and he knew he couldn't lie to the Senate. And as he stared at his aged reflection, he thought about the friends he had outlived. He thought about Obi-Wan, who had disappeared and mostly likely perished during Order 66. He thought about Padmé and Quigon. He even thought about Anakin, yes even him, that little boy from Tatooine. And Jar Jar knew he couldn't lie, out of respect to the memories of his friends. And that's all they were: the shadows of memory. And though the lingering chords that bound him to them were very much real, their shadows were not. They were continually on his mind, and they continued to influence his life, but they were only alive and physical in the past and no more. Just shadows, Jar Jar reminded himself, and he thought the shadows felt more real than the mirror in front of him.

And night finally came, and gradually the lights of the planet-wide city flickered on, until the whole world seemed to scream with light like a molten star.

The Senate Arena wasn't just packed, it was full to nearly every last seat. Senators from every all across the Empire, from the galaxy's core to its outer rim, chattered or were bustling to their seats. There hadn't been a turnout like this since the day the Republic had been voted into an Empire and Palpatine applauded into unlimited power.

Jar Jar sat on a hovering platform next to Sly Moore and the Emperor himself. Mas Amedda, the blue Chagrian who was Grand Vizier to the Imperial Senate, was in the center of the arena, spouting anti-Jedi sentiments and praises to the Emperor. But then some senators in the pews hushed and looked in a direction, and they started whispering until the whispers became contagious and everyone was either hushed or whispering and gazing in that same direction. Mas Amedda stopped his spieling midsentence to what everyone was staring at, and Jar Jar looked too. Darth Vader was standing high up in one of the spectator pews. His arms were crossed as he looked downward at the Senate proceedings. To everyone below, he looked like an ominous shadow.

"Ah. Lord Vader. Welcome," Mas Amedda said with a little uncertainty. The shadow didn't answer, and so the Grand Vizier continued: "The Senate is now in session. Tonight is a major vote, and we are all excited."

The entire arena roared, and senators shook their fists and chanted and yelled. The senators were energized like starving carnivorous fish. They don't realize a much larger fish has already devoured them, Jar Jar thought. As for Vader being there, it made sense, since this wasn't just a historic vote but one that would determine the future of his military. Depending on the outcome, he would either be leading Kaminoan clones or enlisted humans.

Mas Amedda at last motioned to call for order. "Calm yourselves," he barked. "Calm yourselves. Tonight is a historic vote, but let us begin with the preliminary procedures, starting with the anthem. Let us all stand."

Everyone in the Senate Arena, even the Emperor and his secretary, stood, and they sang the Galactic Imperial anthem, "Glory, Our Emperor and Imperial Peace." And Mas Amedda ran through the procedures as quickly as he could, and finally it was near time for the vote.

"And now," Amedda said, "before we begin this vote, we will have senators take the floor and speak on their opposing views. Does anyone have anything they wish to say before we begin?"

This was Jar Jar's opportunity. For a brief moment he hesitated, and he cast his eyes down nervously. His whole life he had only ever wanted acceptance, and for a brief time he had that and more. He had friends who loved him, and even though they were all gone now, just memories he carried, their love remained as true as the blood in his veins and the thousands of senators surrounding him. Suddenly Jar Jar felt a fire burn in him, and his face hardened.

"Grand Vizier, may I take the floor? I wish to make a declaration, though it is unrelated to the vote."

"You have motion to speak, Senator Binks," said Amedda.

Jar Jar bowed respectfully. He rose to his feet, and his hovering platform drifted to the center of the arena. The aliens and humans from every known rock and speck and star from space watched him intently. The Emperor had his hands clasped together and waited patiently.

Jar Jar looked at the Naboo pew, where he normally stood and where Padmé Amidala used to stand. The pew was now empty, and the sight of it made his breathing and heartbeat unsteady, and he felt a burning rise in his chest and in his eyes. He then looked at the shadow high up in the spectator pews, the shadow that had once been Anakin Skywalker. But that wasn't Anakin, not really. The man named Darth Vader was only a ghost.

Jar Jar took a deep breath and steadied himself. He nodded to the empty chair where Padmé once sat, as if she was there watching and waiting to listen, and then he began.

"Seven years ago, liberty died. It died because we killed it. And tonight I expect I will die too, for what I am about to say. But I have a things weighing heavily on my heart, and my must say them."

And Jar Jar Binks, Senator of Naboo, spoke eloquently and powerfully that night. It would be remembered as one of the great speeches of Coruscanti politics, and never did he falter in his speech, nor did he once say meesa. The speech wasn't long, and when he finished, all were silent, and the Emperor seethed secretly but said nothing. Jar Jar defied the Emperor, and he would die for it. For he decried the hunting of Jedi, many of whom had given their lives to save Coruscant when General Grievous had invaded the planet's atmosphere. Jar Jar explained how the Emperor had lied and manipulated his way to power, and how the Senate had been reduced to a meaningless ritual in the process. And he recounted Vader's murdering of children, calling it the foundation on which the Empire had been built, and he looked at Vader as he said it.

And when he finished, he left the Senate Arena, and he walked tall and solemn. And all who saw him were reminded of Jedi from an age long passed, when the Republic was young, and when countless stars still filled Coruscant's night sky, for there was still green on the earth.


	18. The Tale of Anakin Skywalker

_"Anakin Skywalker (22 BE - 1 YE) was a Jedi Knight extremely active during the Clone Wars. He was the youngest to ever join the Jedi Council, and he famously defeated and killed Count Dooku in the Battle of Coruscant. Much mysticism surrounded his existence. The Jedi believed he had been born of a virgin, and that he was the chosen hero of an ancient prophecy. These notions were ultimately proven false, however. According to official Imperial records, the Jedi general was among those killed by Darth Vader during the Destruction of the Temple."_

-Pollux Hax, _Accounts of the Fates of the Jedi_

The Tale of Anakin Skywalker, or the Sith's Tale

 _ORDER 67 Part II_

The rains had come slowly over Coruscant. It started off as a blue sky and puffy white clouds and a cool breeze, and at sunset the breeze kicked up into a chilly wind, and gray clouds loomed in the far distance, in a corner of the red and pink sky. And there was the small and remote sound of thunder, though you could barely hear it over the noises of the city. And that night the clouds came and swallowed up the yellow and white glows of the light pollution. And finally came the rain.

It didn't rain hard at first. The water in droplets pattered like tiny mice feet, pricking the sides of buildings and the tops of syncloth umbrellas. And then the pattering gave way to the sounds of heavy rain, like stampeding insects and swarms clacking their wings, and then the rain poured, and Anakin Skywalker stood in the middle of it and amid the lightning and the wind and the murky echoes of thunder.

The man no longer used that name though, hadn't in a long time, and everyone knew him as Darth Vader. And he stood in front of his black star fighter, waiting, and his cape flapped behind him like a great flag, and his deep mechanical respirations added a slow rhythm to the rain, and in the stormy darkness and surrounded by the bright neon lights of the city he appeared as a terrifying shadow.

Clones in blue-marked armor - the clones of the 501st Legion, known as Vader's Fist - appeared out of the darkness and foggy sheets of rain to meet him, and with them was Jar Jar Binks. The senator appeared calm, evenly slightly detached.

"Have you brought me here to kill me?" Jar Jar asked.

"Come. We're leaving," Anakin said.

"Where?"

Anakin didn't say, just walked to his star fighter and hopped into the cockpit. There was an open co-pilot seat behind him.

"Here. Now," Anakin said, and though he was monotone there was an impatience and severity in his voice.

Jar Jar didn't budge. "I'm not going with you. If you're going to kill me, do it now."

"I'm trying to save you. Get in."

Jar Jar was confused by this. He looked at the blue-marked clones shoulder to shoulder around him, and he had been assuming he was going to die and had prepared for it, and now Anakin was telling him he was going to live.

"Jar Jar, I had my men bring you here to help you escape. But there are more clones coming, clones that aren't mine, and they will be here soon. You have to hurry."

Jar Jar clenched his jaw and grimaced. He relented and climbed into the back seat of Anakin's interceptor.

"I still don't trust you," Jar Jar said.

"I know."

And with that Anakin pressed tiny squared buttons and flipped tiny switches, and the cockpit's glass airlock closed over them, and the rain hammered the glass as the ship rose. They felt the rumbling of the engines burning to life, and they heard the exhaust fire roar behind them. They blasted into the lighting scratched sky, into the clouds and then breaking them into the atmosphere. Below, the clouds were white and milky, concealing their black underbelly, and above were the stars, real stars, unobscured by Coruscant's light pollution.

"Would you look at that," said Jar Jar, admiring them. He hadn't seen stars in a long time.

Anakin remained silent, just piloting, and there was only the sound of his robotic exhales and inhales.

"We're being followed," Jar Jar said.

"I know. They're with us," Anakin said, glancing back at the ships briefly.

There were four ships in total, all ORC-1 star fighters, and they were painted black. They caught up Anakin's interceptor and flew beside him in formation.

"Your infamous Black Fang Squadron," Jar Jar observed.

"They're the best pilots from my squadron. The Four Fangs."

"Lord Vader, this is Fang One. Do you copy?" a voice said over the interceptor's comlink. The voice was rasped and shadowy in the radio frequency.

"I copy, captain," said Anakin.

"We have a hyperdrive ring waiting for you on standby. Follow our lead, sir."

The four ORC-1s jetted past Anakin and careened away in unison like fish in the sea, and Anakin followed them to the hyperdrive ring. His star fighter wasn't designed for long-distance space travel, and he would need the hyperdrive ring to take him where he wanted to go. He maneuvered into the ring and locked it to the ship.

"Readying for hyperspace launch," Anakin said, running his hands fast over the console. The engines of the hyperdrive ring hummed.

"Copy that," said Fang 1.

"Ready now," Anakin said, and he pushed the throttle forward, and he and the four ORC-1s beamed into hyperspace. They raced past the stars of the galaxy, and it looked like a tunnel of white streaks flying past them. Jar Jar felt the velocity press his body hard against the seat. And soon they were out of hyperspace, and the stars stopped zipping past them and suddenly froze in place, and they were hovering over a green and brown planet orbiting a red star.

"Where are we?" Jar Jar asked.

"It doesn't have a name. It only appears on ancient Jedi star charts," Anakin said.

Anakin disengaged the interceptor from the hyperdrive ring, and he and the Four Fangs flew in formation towards the planet. They hurtled through the atmosphere like comets, and fire licked their ships and their windshields glared yellows and tangerines, and then the fire dissipated, and lush and endless jungle swept below them. It was nothing but jungle, broken by a snaking brown river that branched off into countless tributaries.

"There's nothing here," Jar Jar said.

"Looks can be deceptive," was the only response.

The ships found a small clearing in the jungle, a speck of a prairie, and landed there on long, hair-thin grass. Soon Anakin, Jar Jar, and the Four Fangs all stood together outside their ships and in the piping hot jungle air.

"It's quiet," said a clone. Fang 2.

He was right. The jungle - the whole planet, it seemed - was noiseless and utterly still. The grass didn't stir, leaves didn't so much as quiver, there were no sounds of insect buzzes and bird whistles and animal cries. And above was a red sun squatting in a red sky.

"So much life and yet this planet somehow feels dead," another clone said. Fang 4.

"Let's go," Anakin said.

The clones grabbed large backpacks from their star fighters and loaded them onto their backs. They were about to leave when there suddenly came loud beeping and electric chirping. Everyone looked back and saw it was Anakin's black astromech droid, F4-LN, slotted inside the interceptor.

A clone laughed. "It looks like the droid wants to tag along."

The droid beeped more.

Anakin ignored it and turned and left it there with the ship, and he and Jar Jar and the clones entered the jungle. They passed thick gnarled trunks and drooping vines and vine-scrawled boulders and gurgling streams, and it wasn't long before they reached the gray stone walls of a ruined temple. They approached the temple's mouth, and in it was only black.

Anakin activated his red light saber and beckoned the others to follow him, and he used the light saber as a torch. The others followed, and the only sounds were their footsteps and the humming of the light saber and Anakin's mechanical breathing. And the red glow of his light saber cast their shadows on the stone walls.

Soon they were in the temple's heart, inside its main chamber. There were cracks and rifts in the stone ceiling, and the light of the red sky and the red sun dripped through, and in the grim light they could make out their surroundings.

The chamber was small, but its walls were tall, stretching above the jungle canopy. At the back of the room were two altars or chests of stone, laid side by side, and they were simple and had no designs engraved on them. And in the center of the chamber was a pool, cut deep into the stone floor, and in it were fish. The fish were small and brown, and they idly circled each other.

"What is this place?" said a clone.

"It used to be a Jedi temple. It was abandoned eons ago, before the days of the Republic," said Anakin. He then turned to Jar Jar and said: "You'll be safe here."

"Sir," began a clone, "this isn't a temple. I think it's a tomb." The clone was bent over the two stone altars studying them. "There's an inscription here. _Here lie the Jedi of the Sun and the Jedi of the Moon._ Whoever they were, I think they're buried inside these altars."

"It'll have to do. This planet doesn't appear on any Imperial records, so this is the safest place in the galaxy right now," Anakin said.

The clones unloaded their backpacks. Using their supplies they built a make shift bed for Jar Jar, along with a make shift kitchen complete with pots and pans and cooking and eating utensils. They placed down medicines and bandages and tools and a blaster. Soon the backpacks were emptied of their contents, and Anakin and the clones were ready to return to Coruscant.

"It's not a lot, but it'll do alright," said Fang 1, observing their fast work.

"It's lonely here," Jar Jar said.

"What do you expect, after those things you said in the Senate Arena? Be grateful you're still alive," Anakin said.

"Those things needed to be said."

"Don't be so vain. Your speech changed nothing. There's still an Empire, and there's still Imperial Peace. You threw your life away to prove to a point."

"I showed everyone in the Senate that any person - even a joke like me - can stand up to the Emperor. That we don't have to be afraid."

Anakin was quiet for a moment. "You were never a joke, Jar Jar."

"What do I care what you think? You murdered innocent people. You murdered children. Anakin Skywalker died a long time ago and I don't know you. You're just a cyborg that killed all your friends and now you're feeling guilty and trying to make up for it by saving me, because I'm the last friend you have."

There was suddenly the sound of footsteps coming from shadows outside the chamber. Clones in white and red armor burst into the chamber. The Emperor's Eye, and at their head was Warden Fox.

Anakin ignited his light saber, and there was a snap and a hiss and a red glow like magma. He spoke coolly.

"Return to Coruscant, Fox. The Gungan is not your concern. You're far out of your jurisdiction."

"Sorry, Lord Vader. I have my orders straight from the mouth of the Emperor. The senator comes back with us."

The Four Fangs poised their guns at the warden.

"You heard Lord Vader. Leave," said Fang 4.

Fox gave a short whistle, just a flicker of two notes, and the clones of the Emperor's Eye shot and killed the Four Fangs.

"Your Fangs may dominate the voids and mists and asteroid belts of space, but my men rule the soil," said Fox.

"How did you find us?" Anakin said.

"Your astromech droid sent your coordinates. We found your ships and followed your tracks here. Now stand down. That's an order from the Emperor."

"Is that a threat?"

"We kill Jedi regularly, sir. A Jedi in a black helmet makes no difference to us. Our loyalties lie with the Emperor first."

"I've also killed my share of Jedi. I can handle ten pawns."

"You don't understand. The Emperor is here."

Anakin stopped. "He's here? Now?"

"Yes sir."

Anakin's breathing slowed. He gazed down at the hilt of his light saber, at the silver metal and black matte of it, and the metal caught the red gleam of the blade. Suddenly he felt Jar Jar's hand on his arm. Anakin looked at him, but Jar Jar didn't look back. And he approached Fox with his hands held out.

"Go ahead and have me," he said.

"They'll kill you, Jar Jar," Anakin said.

"Don't pretend you care. Besides I'm not scared to die. I knew what would happen when I gave my speech."

"Jar Jar."

Fox cuffed him.

Jar Jar sighed. "Let me go. I'm sad and alone and I want to see my friends again. And when I die I'll be a part of the Force and I'll see them all again. I'll really see them, and I miss them."

And the Emperor's Eye took Jar Jar away, back to the small prairie with the ships, and Anakin and Fox followed behind.

"A red sun," Fox mused. "I like it."

They reached the ships, and among them was a hulking Delta-class shuttle, white and pristine. And outside the shuttle stood the Emperor waiting, accompanied by six Immortals.

The Emperor's Eye loaded Jar Jar Binks into the shuttle. It was the last time Anakin Skywalker saw his friend, and Jar Jar never looked back.

Fox walked up to the Emperor and saluted.

"Four clones died during the extraction, my Lord. It was unavoidable."

"I suppose they were Vader's men, then."

"Yes sir."

"Very good, warden. As you were."

Warden Fox saluted and disappeared into the shuttle with his men. Meanwhile Anakin saw his astromech droid F4-LN still nestled inside his star fighter. Without moving or so much as glancing at the droid, he used the Force to crush its head, and the metal shell of it crumpled into tiny folds, and wires busted and spewed out of the metal compartments like jungle vines, and the droid screamed an electronic shriek and sparks flew, and then it stopped. Smoke slowly rose from the metal carcass.

The Emperor was unamused.

"You have disappointed me greatly."

Anakin didn't answer, and there was only the indifferent sound of his breathing. The Emperor closed his eyes for a moment.

"I know the clumsy frog creature meant a lot to you. He was the last surviving connection to your past life. Maybe he gave you hope, that somewhere deep inside you, Anakin Skywalker still lives. Maybe you even hoped Anakin could come back. But Skywalker is dead. I made you stronger. I made you Vader. There is no going back after what you've done, my apprentice."

The Emperor returned to his shuttle, escorted by his Immortals. The shuttle wings lowered and the ship rose and soared off into the red sky, leaving Darth Vader alone among the hair-thin grass and the ancient trees and the unnatural jungle silence. And Vader stood there listening to the sounds of his own breathing, and he felt cold.


	19. The Tale of Darth Vader

_"The first recorded sighting of Darth Vader was at the Jedi Temple during Order 66. He was seen slaying Jedi, and he has since dominated every war front and has led his Clone Army to victory after victory against Jedi and rebel planets alike. No one knows who he is, where he came from, or how he became commander of the clones. But one thing is for certain: he has changed this galaxy forever. And as this new chapter in history unfolds, he will no doubt have pivotal role to play, whatever the future holds."_

-Pollux Hax, from his newest book _Reflections on Order 66_

The Tale of Darth Vader, or the Chosen One's Tale

 _ORDER 67 Part III_

Darth Vader had heard the news straight from the mouth of the Emperor. It was time. And so Vader amassed the armies of the Empire. He assembled the 501st Legion, loaded the starfighters and the Star Destroyers, and he even summoned the eleven Starkillers. He stood on a high balcony of the Emperor's Palace, and below were the vast armies of the Empire. A million clones were marching into Star Destroyer hulls, and their marching hammered slow and heavy like a great and ominous war drum.

Behind Vader were all the Starkillers, standing and waiting for his command. It was the first time the Starkillers had been together in one place, for they always did their work alone. And meanwhile Vader observed the great chess board of white clone helmets and raised black rifles, and Vader's cape fluttered and snapped behind him in the wind as he watched.

A clone commander appeared on the balcony and approached and saluted Darth Vader. The clone was designated CC-2224, though he was more commonly called Cody. He was the commander of the entire 501st Legion, and his armor had the Legion's blue markings. Cody was perhaps the most decorated clone from the clone Wars and he had never lost a battle.

"We are ready for launch, sir," Cody said.

"Very good, commander. Stand by and wait for further orders," Vader responded.

Commander Cody saluted again and left the balcony.

The 501st was ready, every last thousand and every last hundred and every last one. Every Star Destroyer was loaded up to the brim and their doors were sealed airtight shut, and their behemoth engines roared to flaming azure life. And Darth Vader left the balcony and descended down the Palace along with the Starkillers, and he and they boarded a Delta-class shuttle, and Commander Cody joined them.

As Vader sat in the shuttle, his holoprojector, a thin metal disk that fit neatly in the palm, chimed. He unclipped it from his belt and activated it, and there in the air above it appeared the icy blue hologram of the Emperor.

"Is everything ready?" the Emperor said.

"Yes, my master. The siege awaits your command."

"Then begin it, Lord Vader. Begin it."

The hologram evaporated, and Darth Vader told the pilot to lift off. The shuttle hummed and lifted and screeched into space. And in space they were joined by the Star Destroyers and the V-wings and the Y-wings and the Maelstroms and the ORC-1s, all bound for the planet Budestia.

'

From above Coruscant's atmosphere, Budestia was a pale green star. From up close, it was a green marble, softly glowing, and wrapped in the white swirling brushstrokes of clouds. It orbited a small yellow sun, and it had two frosty white moons.

Darth Vader's fleet had launched into hyperspace and just now arrived near the planet and was approaching it.

"Lord Vader, we have an incoming transmission," the pilot said.

"Accept the transmission," Vader said.

The pilot flipped a switch, and the blue hologram of a man flickered over the pilot's cockpit console. The holographic man was old but had all his hair, still thick, and just a few wrinkles around the mouth and near the eyes, and he wore a very simple and no doubt costly suit. He stood very straight, and his eyes had a youthful fire to them.

"This is the president of Budestia. Whoever you are, desist now, or we will send our fleet up to meet you."

"Then meet us. This is a siege, Mister President. I care little what you do."

"We have Jedi on our side. Thousands."

"I know. That is why we have come. The Empire has let your planet remain independent in good faith, and now you harbor thousands of war criminals. You have abused your freedom."

"We are free because we are strong. The Separatists couldn't conquer us, nor could the Hutts, nor could the Sith Armies of the ancient days. You will fail just as they did."

The transmission ended. Soon an armada of star cruisers rose out of the planet and towards Vader's fleet. Vader observed them, not saying anything, and there was only the sound of his robotic breathing.

"Your orders, sir?" the pilot said matter-of-factly.

Vader was quiet for a moment more.

"Get me to my flagship," he finally said.

"Yes sir."

The pilot maneuvered the shuttle towards Vader's flagship, the _Phantom's Curse_. The shuttle entered the flagship's docking bay, and the shuttle's wings folded up neatly like origami, and it eased onto the metal floor. The shuttle door opened, and out came Vader followed by Cody and the Starkillers.

"Commander," Vader said to Cody as they walked.

"At your command."

"Ready the fleet."

"Consider it done," Cody said, and he rushed off.

Vader stopped and turned to the Starkillers.

"And you know what to do. Don't fail me," he said.

The Starkillers bowed slowly, simultaneously, and they skulked away like grim dark spirits. It was just Vader now.

The docking bay was huge, and clones in white and blue-marked armor swarmed the place, and many were organized into neat formations that marched thunderous footfalls, and many scurried individually to their battle stations. And meanwhile an Imperial officer in neat gray clothes walked speedily up to Vader.

"Your interceptor is prepped and ready, sir," the officer said, and he led Vader to his Eta-class Actis interceptor. It was painted black. And beside the interceptor was a small astromech droid. "A new astromech, per your request. Custom-made, and incorporating schematics from the latest models," the officer added and gestured to the droid with a nod. The droid was black, like Vader's previous astromech, but this one was touched up with yellow, and blue pinstripes ran horizontally down one of its legs.

"What's its number?" Vader asked.

"Z1-OM."

Vader studied the droid. "Load it up," he finally said.

They did, and meanwhile Vader sat in the cockpit and fired up the engines. In a moment his interceptor was ready for war.

"Another fine day to fly," chimed a voice. It was Cody. His voice was coming from the internal comlink radio. He sounded excited.

"We are launching in sixty seconds, commander," was all Vader said.

"Copy that."

"And don't let them strike first. Obliterate them."

And the Empire did obliterate them. The sixty seconds passed, and the Imperial fleet launched into battle, and the battle was short and brutal. The Empire blasted holes into the Budestian starcruisers, they razed starfighters to metal shreds, and the warzone quickly became an asteroid belt of hurtling wreckage. And among the wreckage the Empire still continued to hammer Budestia's fleet. Of all the Empire's forces, Darth Vader was the deadliest. He had been long rumored the best pilot in the galaxy, and here he showed it beyond a doubt. His style was acrobatic and fast, but also refined and calculated, and against him not even the best pilots stood a chance.

It wasn't too long before Budestian starfighters began to retreat in hordes. It was then that the Starkillers appeared, piercing the vacuum of space like fiery chunks broken off a comet. They flanked the retreating starfighters from behind, and they piloted stark white Delta-7 light interceptors, and with them were the ORC-1s of Black Fang Squadron, though the Four Fangs were not among them. And not a single Budestian made it past them. And that was the end of the battle, over nearly as soon as it started. And next was the siege of the planet.

The Star Destroyers breached the planet's atmosphere, and below were the clouds and forested mountains of Budestia. It was a beautiful world, with an occasional old city nestled snuggly between mountains or in a valley. The cities were of an antiquated, hand-laid and hand-paved and hand-sculpted architecture, and the stone buildings were of browns and yellows and whites and grays. The Budestians themselves were all human, and their military uniforms were navy blue with polished black boots and shiny brass buttons. They were organized and spirited, and they shouted war cries at the incoming invasion in the skies, and they were ready to defend their homeworld to the very last man. In the capital city were many men and the best of them, and with them were a thousand Jedi, the last Jedi of the fallen Jedi Order, and their lightsabers ignited as a vast plain of green and blue fire.

And in front of them all, in front of the Jedi and in front of the Budestian soliders, was a hooded figure. The figure stood patiently waiting as the Star Destroyers landed and rested among the mountains like sleeping giants, and out of them came the million clones marching straight for the capital city. In the lead were Darth Vader and the Starkillers, and Commander Cody followed closely behind. And the hooded figure stood unfaltering. He removed his hood, and he was someone Darth Vader had not seen for a very long time. The figure had been a Jedi Master and a senior member of the Jedi Council for years, and he had been the best lightsaber duelist in the galaxy, and Vader hadn't seen him since the Jedi Order fell. It was Mace Windu, and when Vader saw him, he knew it could be no other. Master Windu had grown a beard, thick and black, and a hideous scar ran across his face from his ear down to his cheek on the other side. His hands were droid hands, all metal and wires. Windu grimaced darkly at Vader as the Imperial forces approached, and he revealed two lightsabers from under his cloak, and there were two snaps a single hiss, and two purple blades shone brightly.

It was the Siege of Budestia. It was the battle to end all uprisings, and it was the final stroke of the Jedi Purge. This battle would be remembered as the last gasp of the Clone Wars, the last breath of a time when Jedi were many and when there was still hope that things would get better, that the Empire wasn't forever. The Siege of Budestia was the slayer of dreams and the final brick in the foundation of an everlasting Empire. And it was a slaughter.

The Budestians put up a valiant fight, and the clones of the 501st Legion gave a cold and merciless one in turn. Clones and Budestians died in countless numbers, and among the fighting were the Jedi on one side led by Mace Windu, and on the other side were the Starkillers led by Darth Vader. For every Starkiller that died, a hundred Jedi perished, for the Starkillers were well-trained and well-experienced, and the dark side was strong in these days of the new Galactic Empire. And the most powerful warriors on either side were Darth Vader and Mace Windu. They butchered everyone in their path.

The battle raged, and night fell over the planet, and the surrounding trees were on fire, and buildings collapsed one after the other. Civilians were fleeing the city or screaming trapped under rubble. And V-wings fought the Budestian starfighters in dogfights high over the city, and whenever a ship was shot down it crashed down onto the building or onto the fighting Budestians and clones. And meanwhile the planet's two moons hung silently above the chaos as silver crescents, almost peaceful against the glaring fire and amid the frantic screams and rocket roars and blaster shots.

Windu and Vader were so devastating they cut a river of corpses through the battlefield. The Budestians and even the Jedi fled Vader, but the clones kept firing at Windu with an automated, droid-like fearlessness.

At last and perhaps inevitably, their paths crossed. They flowed into their duel seamlessly, and their duel was fierce and fast, and it seemed as if red and purple light swirled around them. Their clashing spat fiery sparks, and they scraped and gashed the ground. It looked as if Mace Windu was gaining the upper hand. Mace's style was a channeled savagery, aggressive and strong and edging on uncontrolled but still precise and exact. His eyes burned with hatred, and though he didn't say a word, he knew the face behind the mask of Darth Vader. He felt the presence of Anakin Skywalker, and Vader knew it. Behind the mask, behind the armor and the cybernetic implants, Vader was just a scared little boy standing before the Jedi Council for the first time.

The two men fought hard, and Vader's armor was falling to pieces, and his cape was shredded and riddled with holes. Windu was only faring slightly better, but they fought on and all the harder. It was then that Windu cut off Vader's right hand, and sparks spurted out. Vader shoved Windu aside with the Force to retrieve his lightsaber, still clutched by his severed hand lying on the ground. Windu rushed at him, and Vader grabbed his lightsaber and fought left-handed.

Many Starkillers had died now, and one of the surviving Starkillers rushed at Windu from behind, but the Jedi sensed it and without turning reached his hand back. With the Force, Windu tripped the Starkiller and then slammed him face first onto the ground. The Starkiller hit the ground hard right by Windu's feet, and he flailed and scrambled to stand back up, and Windu didn't let him and mid-fight with Vader he swept his lightsaber back and cleaved the Starkiller's head in half.

While Windu's fighting style was ferocious and feral, Vader's was robotic. It emphasized powerful wide strokes and unstoppable momentum. But he was at a disadvantage with only one hand, and he was losing. He was breathing fast, more gasping than breathing.

It was then that Windu made a slip during a combination of strikes. It was subtle slip, and Vader punished him for it. The Sith Lord slashed one of Mace Windu's lightsabers into two pieces. He then kicked Windu in the stomach, and the Jedi lurched back a few steps. Vader raised Windu off the ground with the Force, and he slammed the Jedi onto the ground several times. The Jedi dropped his lightsaber, and it lay there on the ground. Vader then hurled his own lightsaber at Windu like a spear, and the red plasma blade pierced right through the Jedi's gut. Windu screamed, then stared at the lightsaber lodged inside him, then at Vader with a malice that tinged his eyes red. He bellowed again, and he used the Force and ripped a blaster rifle from a dead clone's hands and fired at Vader, ignoring the lightsaber in his body. Vader deflected the blasts with his hand, then caused the blaster to crumple. And suddenly, though only to Darth Vader and Master Mace Windu, the world seemed to slow down.

The war still waged, men still killed men and discharged their grenades and shot with their rifles, and starships were still falling out of the sky and crashing around them, but for some odd reason, at this moment, the world seemed to hush. Mace Windu stared at the crumpled rifle in hand curiously, as if he just now realized he was dead. He studied it, and like a child no longer interested with a toy dropped it. He then gazed down at the lightsaber in his stomach. He pulled the lightsaber out of himself slowly, and he winced as he did it. Vader stood and watched, and the metal of his cybernetic limbs were visible, and his cape was now gone, and his helmet was cracked open in places. He just stood and breathed his heavy robotic breaths and watched. And Mace Windu seemed to be considering his own death. He felt the weight of the red lightsaber that had killed him, and he waved it around once or twice, almost playfully as he pondered it. The malice in his face was gone. He seemed pensive, deep in his thoughts, trying to make sense of how Darth Vader had killed him. And then he was gone. He vanished, and his clothes and Darth Vader's lightsaber dropped onto the ground.

And that was the end of Mace Windu. He was one with the Force, and he would never again be seen in this galaxy or any other as a mortal man.

Darth Vader retrieved his lightsaber, then the lightsaber of Mace Windu. He examined the hilt. Commander Cody was nearby, and his armor was charred with black spots and dinted and scratched, but he was otherwise perfectly unscathed. Cody saw Vader studying the metal hilt of some Jedi and ran up to him.

"Lord Vader. Victory is imminent. We expect Budestia to surrender within the hour."

"Commander."

"Yes sir."

"Have your men collect every dead Jedi and shoot them one by one in the head. Then pile and burn the bodies. Record each body you find. I don't want there to be any more chances of seeing ghosts."

"Yes sir. And the survivors?"

"I want them in chains and on the _Phantom's Curse_."

"It shall be done."

When the battle was over, when the Budestians surrendered and when all was said and done, the Siege of Budestia would be remembered as a pyrrhic victory. Hundreds of thousands of clones perished, and only four of the eleven Starkillers remained. Meanwhile Budestia's population had been decimated, its capital city in ruins, and nearly two hundred Jedi were rounded up and captured. The rest had all been massacred during the siege. The clones dragged Budestia's president out of his home and shot him in execution fashion, then did the same to his family. The planet was now an Imperial world, and its people Imperial citizens. A puppet president would need to be set up. But Vader's priority was the surviving Jedi, not politics. He left a standing force of one hundred thousand strong on Budestia, then left with the rest back to the Star Destroyers and back to Coruscant. He now had every Jedi in the galaxy counted, catalogued and, if alive, captured.

The hunt for the Jedi was over. It was now time for Order 67 to commence.


	20. The Tale of Sheev Palpatine

_"Our great and magnanimous Emperor (may he live forever) has freed us - deplorable and undeserving wretches that we are - from the unforgiving yoke of Jedi tyranny. May we all strive daily to imitate his stalwart nobility, honor, and wisdom, and to always be mindful of his love and sacrifice for us, lest we abuse his gifts of freedom and happiness, which he alone has given us. Let us thank him by working hard for the Empire. Indeed, we ought all to say with ardent fervor: 'I will work harder!' Make this your motto, and you will succeed in all you do, and you will make the Emperor proud."_

-Pollux Hax, in a speech to students at a graduation ceremony

The Tale of Sheev Palpatine, or the Emperor's Tale

 _ORDER 67 Part IV_

The room was finished. One of the technicians went up to the Emperor, who stood in the center of the room admiring the work. The others were packing up their tool sets or sitting and drinking water out of disposable plastic cups.

"Everything's up and running. We'll be loading up our things and leaving in a minute," the technician said.

"You did a marvelous job," the Emperor said, glancing from wall to ceiling to wall.

"We try, your Excellency."

"Hush. Take pride in your work."

"Yes, your Excellency."

"And I've already transferred the eighty thousand credits to your account, per our agreement."

"Thank you, your Excellency."

The Emperor moved to one of the blue glass walls and put a pale bony hand on it. The wall softly hummed under his hand and felt warm. Behind the blue glass was a mess of tangled wires and layers of plastic green circuit cards and giant roaring pieces of hardware. But that was all hidden and soundproofed, and from this side of the wall there was just the blue glass, four walls and a ceiling of it. The glass glowed, and it was like being inside an aquarium, or like being surrounded by stained glass windows lit on all sides by the sun. The only thing that gave the allusion away was the door. It was open, and outside were the regal halls of the Imperial Annex Building along with all their various stone colors and textures.

"And you said it was voice activated?" the Emperor said, and he glanced back at the technician.

The technician nodded. "It'll only respond to your voice too."

"How do I turn it on?"

"Say _on_."

"On."

Suddenly the walls flared bright like blue lightning and the room made a brief deep whine. The walls began to recede into a blue watery distance, it seemed, and shrank away to blackness, and now a forest appeared, in three dimensions and in colors produced to the final pebble and vein in the tree bark. The ceiling above them became a deep night sky dappled in countless tiny stars, and in the far, far distance was the flickering tangerine of a small fire, and shadowy figures stooped around it quietly.

"This must be Kashyyyk," the Emperor mused, observing the trees with the width and height of the modern skyscraper. "And those creatures over there must be Wookies." He referred to the shadows surrounding the fire.

"Kashyyyk is the default setting," said the technician.

"Amusing."

"Wait a moment."

The hidden sensory machinery was beginning to blow a soft cool breeze at them, and it carried in it the odors of the forest. There was the fresh rain smell of a hidden lake, the damp earth smell and cool leafy smell of the ground, the gray musky smell of the wood of the trees, and the faint mulch smell of animals. And now the sounds: the chirping of crickets and chattering of frogs, the rustling of leaves, the scurrying of a small rodent somewhere in the grass.

"Why don't the Wookies see us?" the Emperor observed.

"You mean our camera droid? All our camera droids are cloaked."

"And this is happening live on Kashyyyk, right now?"

"More or less. There's a thirty second delay in real time feedback. A lot of sensory data being transmitted a very, very long way. And the delay is longer or shorter depending on how far away the planet is."

"How do I change the planet I'm seeing?"

"Say the name of the planet you want to see."

"Mustafar," the Emperor said, and suddenly the forest shrank away and they were standing amid black brittle earth and red molten rivers and green toxic fumes. The Emperor felt himself sweating. "Tatooine," he said, and they were surrounded by sweeping yellow dunes, and above was an endless blue sky hot like fire, and two suns hung directly overhead so that their shadows were just small dark pools around their feet. Nearby was the dry cracking skeleton of some great beast.

"You have access to two hundred and thirty three worlds. We'll be building and shipping more camera droids at the end of the year, and of course all updates are free of charge."

"Did you synchronize the room to my personal camera droid?"

"We did. It was tricky, but we did it."

"How do I activate it?"

"Say your name."

The Emperor gave a final glance at the Tatooine desert. There was the faint sound of sand people shouting in the far distance, and then the shouts faded. Not even the wind was stirring. "Palpatine," the Emperor said dryly.

The desert shrank away to a tiny blue and yellow dot and then everything was black. Then the blackness revived to colored life, and they were standing in the middle of a prison.

"By the stars," a man muttered.

The prison was huge, as large as a hundred coliseums, and on the walls were countless prison cells. The entire place was made completely of metal, and everywhere above them clones in white and red armor stood on hovering metal platforms.

"What is this place?" another man said.

The sensory machinery kicked in, and they smelled antiseptic sanitation chemicals and that sharp oily smell that metal has. The prison was pin drop quiet.

"How long is the feedback delay if this footage is being captured here on Coruscant?  
the Emperor asked.

"Instant. It would have to be virtually instant," the chief technician answered, staring wide-eyed at the metal coffin they now found themselves in. "I've never seen anything as big as this," he added weakly.

"Only select personnel know about this place. Now stay, would you? If you do, you'll watch history in the making."

"What do you mean?" a man said.

"Stay, and you'll see."

The men all stayed, gazing at every inch of the photo real prison. The Emperor noticed the door to the room was still open, and he could still see the tiled floor and stone columns outside. It was like a rectangular portal standing there in the middle of the prison, and it ruined the immersion of the room.

"If you decide to stay, one of you close that door, would you?"

A man quietly shut the door.

'

Warden Fox ran down the list of names on his electric tablet. J-286: terminated. J-287: terminated. J-288: incarcerated. J-289: terminated. He stood on a hovering platform within the walls of the Iron Crater, and with him on the same platform stood Commander Cody, commander of the 501st Legion and second in command to Darth Vader. Fox busily read through his list, and Cody watched as Imperial Police were bringing prisoners in by the dozens. They were all Jedi, freshly captured from the Siege of Budestia, and they were the last Jedi to be captured by the Empire. The Jedi Purge was over. Every Jedi had been killed or was in the Iron Crater wearing striped pajamas.

"It's over. I can't believe it's over," Cody said.

"Don't, because it's not," Fox said.

"What do you mean? All the Jedi are dead or captured. We can finally have peace now. For the first time in ten years, we can finally have peace, and I survived a whole war to see it."

"There are a few outliers."

"What. Are you saying we missed some?"

"Officially, no."

"Unofficially?"

They watched a Jedi screaming and bucking and flailing her legs as clones threw her into a cell.

"If there are any left, we'll find them. It's inevitable," Cody said.

Fox nodded.

More and more Jedi were being placed in cells. A clone on a hovering platform approached the two clone commanders. He saluted.

"Warden," he said. He turned to Cody and maintained his pose. "Commander."

"Go ahead," Fox said.

The clone dropped his hand, but he kept his rigid, perfectly straight posture, like a good clone. "We are at maximum capacity, sir. What do we do with the rest of the Jedi?"

"Put them on the ground floor."

"Without a cell?"

"They won't go anywhere. Just make sure they stay cuffed."

"Yes sir."

The clone made one last salute and drifted off on his platform. Cody crossed his arms and observed the clones at work.

"I've got to hand it to you. This place is really something."

"It serves its purpose."

Cody thought for a moment.

"Do you ever think about how we're the only ones left?" he said.

"What do you mean?" said Fox, half attentively. He was reading through his list again.

"Rex, Gree, Wolfe, they're all gone. Bly's gone to the Immortals and is basically gone too. It's just us now."

Fox lowered his tablet. What Cody said was true. Every major clone commander who had served in the Clone Wars was gone. It was just Cody, objectively the greatest warrior to have ever served in the Clone Army, and Fox, the Red Death. The rest of the military was a Kaminoan ocean of nameless clones, even to Fox. A primordial sea of white helmets. He couldn't name a single man under his command. He pondered hard, but "The galaxy has changed" was all he said.

Meanwhile clones began transporting Jedi to the ground floor of the prison. It was wide and open like a great plain, and the entire floor was perfectly flat and bare durasteel. Around the two hundred Jedi were standing on the ground floor. Soon the clone from earlier returned.

"That's all the Jedi," the clone said.

"Then our work is done. As you were."

The prison was at overcapacity. Every cell contained an enemy of the Empire. There were Jedi, but also Separatists, Republic senators, university professors, bounty hunters, rebel guerillas, even citizens. Anyone who posed a threat to the Empire or had even spoke out against it was here. Some had only been suspected of harboring anti-Imperial sentiments, but that was enough. Some were simply arrested on the basis of having a university education, particularly in the liberal arts. Thus the Iron Crater was a big facility for a very big population.

Fox ran his fingers over one of the pistols holstered at his sides. "Did you hear about the vote in the Senate?" he said.

"That they're outing us?"

"Yeah."

"It's stupid. The Empire will be weak."

"That's what happens when you get a bunch of politicians who know nothing about military deciding on military."

"The senators are fools."

"So what do you think'll happen to us?"

"I don't know."

"Kill us?"

"Doubt it. Who's going to do it?"

"Our replacements."

"Good luck with that."

Fox chuckled at this, nodding in agreement. "Still," he said, "I don't understand why none of the other clones seem to care."

Cody lowered his head and spoke softly. "Have you noticed how the newer clones are different? They're different from our generation and I think the Kaminoans might have changed something in the cloning process."

"Yeah, I've noticed. They're more quiet. More robotic."

"Less human," Cody murmured.

Suddenly the men heard a long raspy bellow. Everyone in the prison heard it, and it echoed, and everyone was hushed, and the prisoners all looked out from their cells, especially the Jedi. The bellow came again, and it was like the sound of a violent blizzard muffled from behind a glass window. And the bellow faded, and it was followed by a bullwhip crack. The bellow returned, and then there was the pop. First the bellow, and pop. First the bellow. And pop.

Darth Vader, standing on a hovering platform. He was here at the Iron Crater, and he was not alone. Four Starkillers, the four who had survived the Siege of Budestia, accompanied him.

"It must be time," Fox said.

"Time for what?" Cody asked.

It was then that they heard a short electronic beeping. It was Fox's holoprojector. He raised it and turned it on, and there above the flat metal disk was the blue hologram of the Emperor in his shadowy cloak.

"My lord," Fox said.

"I see that all the Jedi have been locked away and that Vader has arrived."

"Yes sir."

"Then the time has come, hasn't it."

"I suppose it has. Awaiting your command."

"You know what to do."

Fox nodded. "Executing Order Sixty Seven."

The hologram dissipated, and Fox put away the holoprojector.

"Order Sixty Seven?" Cody wondered aloud.

Fox didn't acknowledge him. He waved and signaled to some clones. They moved each towards a prison cell.

"What's Order Sixty Seven?" Cody repeated.

"It's the end, Cody. This is the end of the Clone Wars. This is the end of our service to the Republic and to the Empire. It's the end of everything."

The clones were square in front of the prison cells now. They raised their guns. More and more clones begin lining up in front of prison cells. The prison was deafly quiet, and the air was tense.

"Ready!" shouted Fox. His voice bellowed deep like a rancor.

The clones all readied their rifles, and there were electric sounds from every rifle being set off safety. The Jedi on the prison floor watched up in helpless horror and anticipation, for there was nothing else they could do but watch. No clone was aiming his rifle at them.

"Aim!"

Darth Vader and the Starkillers were moving to the ground floor. Over a hundred Jedi stood and watched them near. They realized what was going to happen.

"Fire!"

And that was the end.

The Iron Crater erupted into a thundering barrage of blaster fire. It sounded like an electric rain pounding sheets of metal, and it was ceaseless. Now every clone was moving from prison cell to prison cell, and they fired at whoever was inside, and they fired multiple times, and then they moved along to the next.

Meanwhile Darth Vader and his Starkillers were on the ground floor. They activated their lightsabers, and there was an almost harmonious snap and hiss between them, and the five blades hummed and glared ominous red. They advanced towards the Jedi slowly like grim specters, and they slaughtered the Jedi where they stood on the prison floor.

Fox and Cody stood and watched, and Fox pressed a button on his bracer. A vacant hovering platform moved towards them, and Fox leapt to it and then used it to lower himself to the ground floor. He hopped off and joined Darth Vader and the Starkillers and slaughtered the Jedi with his dual TX-13s.

A desperate Jedi was somehow scaling the wall away from the carnage. Fox saw, and before he could react the Jedi was shot down. He fell screaming and hit the metal hard and died. Fox looked up and saw Cody looking down the sights of his rifle, and the barrel's end glowed blue and smoke faintly wafted up from it. Fox turned and kept shooting.

Soon everyone was dead. Every Jedi, Separatist, and potential rebel lay lifeless in the cells and on the great metal floor of the Iron Crater, and the place had hushed into a graveyard silence. The Empire had no more enemies. For the first time since the days of the Phantom Menace, the galaxy was at peace.

Fox hopped onto a hover platform and rejoined Cody. All the clones were leaving the prison, for there was nothing left to guard. Fox and Cody were leaving also when they suddenly heard more screaming.

The two men looked down and saw that Vader was killing the four Starkillers. The Starkillers were trying to defend themselves but were butchered one by one and they didn't stand a chance.

"Why is he killing them?" Cody asked.

Fox shrugged. "Outlived their usefulness, I guess."

Cody watched silently and said nothing more. They left the prison and entered an enemy free world.

'

The prison faded away, shrank into blackness. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, all of it hummed and became glowing blue glass again. Ant there stood the Emperor and the technicians he had hired. None of them said a thing.

"Today is the beginning of a new age, gentlemen. The terror of the Jedi is over at last. More than that. In a single stroke I have stuck down every enemy of the Empire to last child. You have all witnessed history," the Emperor said, and he smiled, and it was an evil smile. He dragged out his words, relished each one. "And now we have Peace." That final word settled on the men like dead falling leaves before a bleak long winter almost here.

"You killed them," muttered a man.

The Emperor's smile faded. "Yes," he said dryly. His face darkened. His eyes shone a venomous snake gold.

He went for the door and with a sway of his hand it opened. "Wait here," he ordered them. The men didn't budge, just sulked in a dismal ghostly quiet trying to make sense of what they had seen. The Emperor walked out and closed the door behind him. He was back in the hallways of the Imperial Annex Building. There were two Immortals guarding the door to either side. The Emperor turned to face them.

"Kill the men inside, and I want the room dismantled. No evidence," the Emperor said.

The guards nodded and vanished into the room of blue glass. There was screaming.

Meanwhile the Emperor roamed the desolate empty halls of etched stone and fine silk curtains and regal columns, and soon he was back in his office sitting at his desk. There was an electric tablet on his desk, and it was turned on and he saw he had received a message. He checked the message, and it was a list. The Emperor quietly skimmed through it. He stopped and grimaced.

In a moment he activated the holoprojector built into his desk, and it wasn't long before there above his desk was the blue hologram of Darth Vader, arms crossed and standing very still and erect.

"Did you receive Fox's list?" the Emperor said.

"Yes."

"I trust you've reviewed it."

"I have."

"You failed me, my apprentice."

"It is only twelve Jedi."

"And it only takes one to topple an Empire!" the Emperor spat. He calmed himself. "You will find and execute every Jedi on that list and bring me their lightsabers as proof. And you will do it alone. I will no longer give you military support, even from the Five Hundred and First Legion."

"Yes, my master."

The Emperor was reading through the list again. His face softened. "I'm sure you recognized many of the names on this list. Yoda doesn't surprise me. I personally found it interesting to read the name of the your old master. And I look forward to seeing his lightsaber on my desk especially."

"It will be done. I'll find every last one of them."

"You better."

The Emperor cut off the transmission. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. He stood and walked up to the panoramic window sweeping behind his desk. He gazed out at the silver skyscrapers of Coruscant. The sun was just beginning to rise, and the sky was pink and soft and blue, and the skyscrapers glinted with the first light of a golden day.


	21. (the calendar)

The Calendar System of the Empire

'

 _The Phantom Menace: 13 BE_

 _Attack of the Clones: 3 BE_

 _Revenge of the Sith: 1 YE_

 _Tales of the Fallen Republic: 1-7 YE_

 _A New Hope: 20 YE_

 _The Empire Strikes Back: 23 YE_

 _Return of the Jedi: 24 YE_

From the founding of the Empire (1 YE) to the death of the Emperor above Endor (24 YE), the galaxy operated by the Imperial Standard Calendar (ISC). The Calendar was based on Coruscant's 368-day solar year, with each day consisting of 24 standard hours. The Calendar was split into two epochs: Before the Empire (BE) and In the Year of Our Emperor (YE). The first year of our Emperor (1 YE) was the year that the Republic became the Empire and the year that Anakin Skywalker was christened Darth Vader. The previous year was 1 BE.

Prior to the founding of the Empire, at least twenty known calendars were in use throughout the galaxy, and calendar converters were often needed. In 1 YE, the Empire standardized the calendar across all planets, creating a single and universal Calendar for the first time in the history of the galaxy.

The Calendar established 6-day weeks. The days of the week were:

Primeday

Disol

Dilun

Distra

Dipala

Diset

In addition, the Calendar segmented the year into 10 separate months, each comprised of a certain number of days. At the end of the year, there was an unofficial eleventh month called Carnival Week. Carnival Week was a 6-day long public holiday celebrating the Empire and the upcoming New Year. The months of the year were:

Tyriss (40 days)

Plagary (35 days)

Nillo (35 days)

Banary (35 days)

Vayd (35 days)

Palpune (39 days)

Desil (35 days)

Phobe (36 days)

Maus (36 days)

Reve (36 days)

Carnival Week (6 days)

Every fourth year was a Hyper Year, when one day was subtracted from the month of Tyriss, reducing the month to 39 days instead of 40. This was done to synchronize Coruscant's calendar year with the planet's astronomical year, which is 367.75 days.

The Calendar also had multiple public holidays. Not including traditional holidays, these included:

New Year Day (1 Tyriss): the first day of the Imperial Standard Calendar

Peace Day (5 Plagary): a holiday celebrating the peace time of the Empire and the end of the Clone Wars

Nillo Equinox (around 3 Nillo): a commemoration of the vernal equinox

Jedi Festival (34 Nillo): a celebration involving anti-Jedi propaganda

Blue Milk Day (13 Banary): a holiday themed around the popular beverage blue milk

Galactic Day of Song (16 Banary): an annual day of observance, when people are asked to turn to the Emperor in meditation and sing pro-Imperial songs

Day of the Suns (10 Vayd): the birthday of Emperor Palpatine

Vayd Solstice (around 26 Vayd): a commemoration of the summer solstice

Labor Day (the first Disol in Desil): a celebration of the economic and social achievements of workers

Victory Day (34 Desil): the anniversary of the Battle of Coruscant during the Clone Wars, and a commemoration of that Republic victory over the Separatists

Phobe Equinox (around 11 Phobe): a commemoration of the autumnal equinox

Day of the Moons (19 Phobe): the anniversary of the birth of the Empire

Armed Forces Day (23 Maus): a holiday commemorating the clones of the Imperial military

Reve Solstice (around 28 Reve): a commemoration of the winter solstice

The Imperial Standard Calendar proved extremely useful and effective, and many continued to use it even after the Battle of Endor in 24 YE. The identity of the Calendar's creator is unknown, though the Calendar is rumored to have been created by the Emperor himself.


End file.
